Secrets from Chuckling Goat

by Shann Nix Jones

  I tipped a pail of vegetable peelings into the pig’s trough, topped it up with pig pellets, and filled the other end with water. The pigs rooted through the vegetables happily, grunting and squealing. Their pleasure made me smile in spite of myself.

  I carried on into the barn, passing the ranks of familiar, beloved goat faces. The two Anglo-Nubian pedigree princesses, Conkers and Seren, lay regally at the back of their stall and looked disapproving. Lola, stroppy but glistening, leaned on the wall like a dance-hall floozy in a saloon, demanding a scratch behind the ears. Athletic little Toffee hurled herself against the reinforced bars of her stall, trying to jump out. And placid Glenda gazed out with the assurance of a queen bee, waiting to be milked.

  I talked to them and turned on the radio while I fed the calves their milk, watching them root around in the buckets to suck out the last drops. Pulling hay out of the stack, I looked straight down into the eyes of a tiny black kitten, crouching, spitting and snarling behind the hay. We have a community of barn cats who live with us in dignified symbiosis – we feed them, and they keep the rats away, but they aren’t pets. We don’t generally handle them, unless they’re ill or injured.

  This one, though, I reached down and picked up so that it wouldn’t get crushed by the hay. I stroked it until it calmed down, rubbing it behind the ear until it began to purr; finally, it lay relaxed and contented in my hands. And then, for some reason, I felt my eyes burning with hot tears. I stood there holding the kitten and cried for maybe a minute. Then I put the kitten down, wiped my face, and got on with the feeding.

  I tipped the right amount of food into the right bowls (some goats get soaked beet shreds, others prefer dry – all very complicated), distributed them, and let Glenda onto the milking stand. She jumped up neatly as always, tucking her nose into the food bowl as I leaned my cheek against her warm, silky flank. I could hear her stomach rumbling as I milked her, the warm liquid squirting and foaming into the jug beneath my hands.

  I began to feel, in some small part of my mind, comforted. I gave the goats fresh straw and water, then swept out the barn before heading back indoors. There were things to be done on the computer – urgent deadlines to be met – but first I found myself, almost automatically, measuring out milk to make cheese.

  The milk had been stacking up since I’d gone away, and the oldest bottles were starting to go off. I strained the kefir grains out of the goat’s milk kefir, used the kefir to blend up a smoothie, which I stashed in the fridge for an after-school snack, added fresh milk to the kefir grains and put it back on the windowsill to ferment.

  How to Make Cheese

  Cheese is just an ancient method of preserving milk – by getting rid of all the extra water, and keeping the proteins that are left behind. Here’s the basic concept of cheese making:

  You acidify milk. You can do this with nearly anything – yogurt, goat’s milk kefir, lemon juice, vinegar, cheese starter (depending on the kind of cheese you want – cheddar starter, Stilton starter, brie starter, etc.).

  You add rennet, to solidify whatever you’ve got. This results in a big load of semi-solid stuff that looks like blancmange – which is called curds – with a watery layer of ‘whey’ on top.

  You spoon the curds into moulds that have holes in them, leaving as much of the whey behind as possible. The remaining whey continues to run out of the holes for 24–48 hours, leaving the increasingly dry ‘curd’ behind. And that’s all there is to it, really!

  How to make cheese with goat’s milk kefir

  Sit goat’s milk out in a bowl for 12 hours at room temperature, to ‘ripen’.

  Add 30ml (2tbsp) of goat’s milk kefir for each litre (1¾ pints) of milk and stir. Wait one hour.

  Add one drop of rennet per litre (1¾ pints) of milk to 60ml (4tbsp) of pre-boiled, cold water. Add this mixture to the bowl of milk. Stir well.

  Cover and sit for 12 hours at room temperature. (It doesn’t have to be exactly 12 hours – just leave it overnight.)

  You should now have a ‘set’. This is a thin whey on the top and a jelly-like curd substance filling most of the bowl. If you don’t have a set, it might be because the room is too cold. Just leave it for longer, until you do have a set.

  Pour off as much of the whey as possible.

  Ladle the curd into cheese moulds with holes in them, to allow the whey to drain out. Salt each layer as you go. If you like, you can add mustard seeds, parsley, pepper, chili flakes, dried apricots – whatever you fancy! You can experiment, but stick to dried herbs to start with – fresh ones go brown in the cheese and end up looking horrible! Be creative – Joli once came up with a honey-vanilla goat’s cheese that was out of this world.

  Sit the moulds on a cake cooling rack, over a pan, to drain. (The pan is to catch the whey coming off – the rack to prevent the moulds from sitting in the whey.) Turn the cheese every four hours or so. (Tip it out of the moulds, catch, slide it back in other-way-up. This is a bit messy.)

  When the curd is dry enough for your taste, move it to the fridge. Enjoy!

  It was strange – for the first time in days these things didn’t seem like a massive effort, or something unfamiliar, but like something that I just did, automatically. It was easier to do it, than not to do it. I put the thermometer in the cheese pan and added the cheese starter.

  And somewhere, in the washing of milk bottles and the adding of rennet, the straining of the goat’s milk kefir and the stirring of the cheese starter, life started to flow back into the tendrils and roots of the vine of my life. I couldn’t tell you exactly what, but something shifted. The acid depression started to let go its grip, just a little, and things started – just started – to seem possible again.

  9 November 2010

  An iron-grey day with silver edges, just past Bonfire Night. This is a strange celebration – and so very British – to commemorate a crime that never actually happened! Apparently, back in 1605, a group of men intent on restoring Protestant England to Catholicism plotted to blow up the English Parliament and kill King James I.

  One of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, was captured in the cellars of the House of Lords with several dozen barrels of gunpowder, just before they exploded. All of the conspirators were imprisoned, tortured and killed.

  And every year since then, in celebration of the prevention of treason, a ‘Guy’ is burned in effigy on a huge bonfire lit in every city, town and village. There are fireworks, and children chant this poem:

  ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November;

  Gunpowder, treason and plot;

  I see no reason why gunpowder, treason;

  Should ever be forgot.’

  And they don’t forget! Long memories, these British…

  I have new company in the kitchen this morning – a beautiful young African grey parrot that we’ve named Fergie, after the little grey Fergie tractor that’s so revered in this country. He looks like a small falcon – hooked beak, dark grey eyes, silvery plumage and a vivid red tail. He has a bright and acute intelligence – different than a human intelligence, but no less sharp. I’m interested in what it’ll be like, to share space with a new life form.

  I’d asked Rich if he’d mind if we got a parrot, and he agreed, if dubiously. We went to look at one adult parrot listed for sale, and ended up pelting out of the house and along the pavement, while the bird shrieked obscenities as it followed us. So I thought it’d be better if we got a baby parrot. That way, we can teach him what we want him to know. And if he turns out to say swear words, at least they’ll be ones that we taught him.

  The children are enchanted with Fergie; Rich is uncomplaining. I like the sense of company in the kitchen as he sits on his perch, destroying a cluster of seeds with one claw and gazing at me with wise, unfathomable eyes.

  Just below Fergie’s perch are a box of pineapples and a box of lemons. I bought them from the farmer’s market on Friday and am planning an ambitious sort of pineapple-lemon marmalade.

  But today on the
farm the marmalade is going to have to compete with my soap making. Here’s how that started…

  A few months ago, we had a surplus of goat’s milk backing up in the fridge. Turning to my computer, as I always do, I typed: ‘What can I do with goat’s milk?’ Got all the familiar answers – mostly goat’s cheese. Boring – everyone makes it. Moreover, everyone seems to make it better than I do!

  But then I saw an entry for goat’s milk soap. Now that was intriguing. Looking a little further, I saw that it was supposed to be good for eczema. Benji had eczema – bingo!

  I discovered that it’s not completely straightforward, getting the goat’s milk into the soap, but it can be done, through a careful freezing process. Where could I learn to make such a thing, I thought? After more searching online, and finding out that making homemade soap involves dealing with hot oil and lye (caustic soda), which can burn or blind you, I figured it might be better to get some expert training before I damaged myself.

  I found a marvellous place called Soap School, where a lady named Sarah Janes, and her husband Shawn Dritz, train interested people like myself to make all kinds of delicious homemade soaps, bath bombs, skin creams and the like.

  I took a train to London and spent a weekend on a training course with the Soap School, learning to make soap. I enjoyed it so much that then I took another course in Yorkshire, where I learned to put the goat’s milk into skin cream. I came home and whipped up a batch of my new concoctions that very afternoon.

  Pineapple Marmalade

  3 sweet oranges

  1 lemon

  1 large can pineapple chunks (or a fresh pineapple, if you can get it).

  1.8kg (4lb) sugar

  Cut the oranges and lemon (leave the peel on) into very thin slices. Put them in a pan, and just cover with water.

  Bring to the boil and then simmer until tender.

  Add the juice from the can of pineapple chunks (or the fresh pineapple) and the finely chopped fruit, and simmer until all the fruit is well blended.

  Add the sugar, stir until dissolved and then boil rapidly to setting point.

  This marmalade is a particular favourite with children, who don’t always care for the traditional bitter orange version, and is very good served with steamed puddings or vanilla ice cream.

  Some marmalade recipes I’ve seen recommend that you take out the lemon pips, put them in a muslin bag and boil them along with the fruit. This is to get the pectin into the mix, which is the stuff that makes the jam set properly. It’s easy to pull the muslin bag out before you add the sugar.

  I began to use the soap and cream on Benji’s skin, and watched carefully over the next few weeks. About three weeks after I began, I looked down at Benji’s skin and had to double-check which arm I was looking at – the angry red patch that had been there before was gone.

  Was it the same arm? It was. Somehow, unbelievably, the combination of the goat’s milk soap and the skin cream combined had cleared Benji’s eczema.

  I found it hard to credit, but staring down at his perfectly clear skin, I had no choice but to believe it. Cleopatra clearly had been onto something, when she bathed in it – goat’s milk was the secret!

  Abruptly carried away on a wave on enthusiasm, I started making different flavours of soaps and creams. There was a nearly infinite variety of essential oils that I could add into the basic recipe, each of which has its own individual scent and health benefits, so I was spoiled for choice. Where to begin?

  Rosemary essential oil, for example, helps with wrinkles and age spots – and it’s also great for itchy, flaky skin. So, I tried making a set of soap and skin cream with rosemary in it. What a lovely scent! Fantastic. I added some organic pink facial clay, and I came up with a pale pink cleansing bar that made my shower smell like a spa.

  Let’s see, I thought, what else could I make? I was running amok at this point, whizzing round the farmhouse kitchen like a demented bee, stirring up ingredients in my huge stainless-steel jam-making pan, mixing my oils and lotions and potions. Rich would come into the kitchen, raise his eyebrows and back slowly out again.

  I thought of the people I love. What would they like? My mum is allergic to everything, even lavender. So, for her, I whipped up a cleansing bar and skin cream with just milk, honey and oatmeal. Completely fragrance-free and non-allergic, I guessed it would be great for kids as well. And for pregnant women, too, since I’d read that they’re not supposed to have any essential oils at all.

  And our girls? Like most teenagers, they get occasional skin break-outs. What could I make for them? In my reading I came across a scientific study showing that thyme essential oil kills acne bacteria better than benzoyl peroxide, without any of the redness and drying that the nasty chemicals create. Got straight onto Amazon and ordered myself some thyme essential oil!

  I added a swig of tea tree essential oil, just for general antibacterial purposes, and came up with a break-out cleanser/skin cream set that works a treat for acne. Something about the combination of the goat’s milk, thyme and tea tree essential oils does something magic.

  When the girls used it, it took the redness out of their spots in two hours, and cleared their skin in a week. ‘Make some more, please!’ they begged me, when the first trial pots ran out. So I did.

  And then of course there are the gorgeous scents of lavender, lemongrass and spearmint essential oils. Impossible to resist. I love the single strong scents, only one for each kind of soap – I think your body can smell that it’s good for you. All those essential oils bring their own healing remedies to the skin, as well as smelling delicious. Why would you ever use artificial perfumes, when essential oils are so amazing?!

  So I made soap with those flavours, colouring them soft purples and yellows and greens with alkanet root, calendula and green facial clay. The bars are nice and hard, they don’t go stringy and mushy like some hand-made soaps I’ve tried. And they raise a gorgeous lather.

  And the cream is silky and smells lovely as well, sinking into the skin quickly and leaving it feeling soft and healed.

  It occurs to me that skin is not so different from the farm. Far from being sterile, the reality is that human skin is covered with trillions of teeming bacteria. And all those life forms need nourishing, just like our animals on the farm. Perhaps the natural ingredients in the skin cream – the milk and natural oils and so on – are actually feeding the skin, giving it the nutrients it needs to heal, and that’s why the cream works so well on eczema and spots.

  Anyhow, I’m really pleased with how it’s all turned out! Now I’ve got batches and batches of soap ready for Christmas, sitting cut up into chunky little bars, all over the kitchen table, wafting their gorgeous scents through the room.

  People love them for gifts. But could I really sell them, and make a business out of it? I don’t know – I’ve never been someone who wants to run her own business. A paycheck girl, that’s me. I like to do what I do, and let someone else handle the headache of accounting and all that malarkey. I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to begin to run a business!

  But still, there’s something tempting about trying….

  I’m probably as mad as a box of frogs. Rich would say that I’m definitely as mad as a box of frogs.

  But, indulgent as ever, he’s made me some gorgeous little shelves from reclaimed pine; they look like bird houses. Yesterday we spent a peaceable afternoon together in Rich’s wood workshop, as he sawed the shelves to the right length and nailed them together, and I coated the wood with beeswax. The soap will be displayed on the shelves, with a sign that says, ‘Homemade soap from the Soap Shak’. (The name’s taken from a sign that Joli made for me – that’s the original spelling!)

  And then I’m going to have to summon up the courage to walk into shops in this area and ask them if they’ll sell it… not a prospect that I’m looking forward to.

  Today, I have to wrestle with the labelling for the soap packaging. EU regulations dictate that it all has to be done just so –
Latin names of ingredients included. It’s intimidating.

  So, after the milking of the goats and the feeding of the pigs and the sheep that are being fattened in the top shed, it’s back into the kitchen to chop up those pineapples and lemons, put the marmalade on to boil, and straight into writing the soap labels.

  23 November 2010

  It’s been a time of high romance on the farm! All the nanny goats are coming into season, and we, like all the other goat owners in the area, have been scrambling around trying to solve the billy problem.

  The billy problem is this – male goats are big, and they smell atrocious. (For the record, female goats kept in tidy conditions smell lovely, a bit like cinnamon.) And most people don’t want to keep male goats around.

  Since you only really need the males once a year, to put the does in kid so that you can milk them, it makes more sense to have just a few billies around. Then you can transport the females to the males when it’s time, as I did back in September.

  In practice, there are fewer and fewer goat keepers in our area. Goat-keeping seems to have had its heyday back in the late 70s, with The Good Life, a popular British TV show, and it’s been dwindling ever since. So there are fewer males around than there used to be, and each year this problem dawns with a new intensity on the owners of nannies – who absolutely have to find a billy!

  You’d think that there’d be an organized registry of male goats standing at stud, and of course there is. The British Goat Society keeps one, and so does the Anglo-Nubian Breed Society. But those males tend to be a six-, eight- or even 10-hour drive away – and although we love our goats, we don’t love them quite that much.