The Mobile Home Woman | Our journey from urban homesteading to rural homesteading at Windhaven farm…

How to Make Fromage Blanc Cheese!

Posted on November 14, 2014 by MobymomNovember 14, 2014

Here is another goat milk cheese that we love to make! SO easy and sort of fun too!

It’s called Fromage Blanc and it’s a French style soft cheese. A bit like a farmer’s cheese, but a little bit more complicated, because you do need to purchase the culture from a cheese making supply company. That being said, it’s easy to do, and if you are like us, we order several packs and it’s very reasonably priced. We keep our cultures in the freezer so they keep for a very long time.

With this cheese… you bring your fresh goat milk up to a nice gentle heat of only 86 degrees. Hardly very warm at all. Just to bring the milk up to a comfy temperature that the culture LOVES. Once at 86 degrees… just remove from heat and add the packet of culture.

I like to let mine lay on the surface of the warm milk for a few minutes and hydrate. Then I give it a gentle stir, put the lid on and move it to a nice warm place in your home.

If you are lucky to have a nice warm kitchen in the wintertime, then just let it sit on the back of the stove or the counter for a good 12 to 15 hours. Undisturbed. Our house is still a little too cold… the cheese likes about 70 degrees or so, so I brought it into our warmest bedroom and let it just sit on a nightstand! Haha… making cheese can be a little weird. Since you don’t stir or fuss with it, I think it is fine to just sit there and make cheese!

Once done, you can take it back to the kitchen and open up the pot… you will be greeted by this lovely heavy layer of CHEESE in your pot. And this is the fun part. You take a nice big knife and you cut the cheese into cubes. This is the curd! I cut mine up fairly small… several passes gently through the heavy top layer.

Once that is done, you can drain off the whey and use it for all sorts of things… and I gently transfer the lovely curds into my cheese cloth laden colander. I like to let it drip for an hour or so… you can cut the curds up a bit more, or leave kind of lumpy, it’s really up to you. I like this cheese a little more like a soft cottage cheese… so I tend to cut up the curds fairly small.

Now, the really neat thing about this cheese is how nicely it blends with a variety of spices and flavors… we have made our sweet, savory and spicy! Of course, not at the same time, but it’s fun to mix it up and see how it works. We liked the sweet (drizzled with honey and a dash of powdered sugar and a wee bit of cinnamon!) but really like the savory… and the easiest way to do so is to add a dip spice mix to your cheese! For a gallon batch, I add a half a pack of Knorr’s veggie dip to the soft cheese. Stir in well, and then let rest in the frig for 12 hours or so. It really lets the cheese and the spices blend together nicely and you end up with a soft cheese that is awesome with fancy crackers, spread on fresh bread or with your favorite veggies! SO yummy!

I guess the stuff keeps like a normal soft cheese in the frig, but ours never seems to hang around more than a day or two at the moment. It’s so good, it gets eaten up pretty quickly! If you have goats or cows and you need a nice soft cheese that is so easy, give Fromage Blanc a try! It’s a winner!

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Getting Ready for the First Snow…

Posted on November 14, 2014 by MobymomNovember 14, 2014

Around our little homestead, there are certain yearly rituals that seem to happen. The breeding of the sheep, the raking of leaves, gathering of apples and pumpkins for the livestock and then of course, there is the application of the plastic!

Hardly romantic, it’s something that we really have to do. Our screen porch is a very important part of the homestead during the winter. Once it is all covered in plastic, it provides a windbreak and fairly tolerably warm area to do prep work in, store some feed and also keep our bunnies much warmer. It is really remarkable when you are doing the plastic work in the cold, how much warmth is caught in the area as you finish up. When that last wall goes up, the whole place becomes very tolerable, almost comfortable!

It’s also where we milk our goat and also will bring any animal in that needs any sort of attention. Heck, we’ve even had a pony and a goat spend the night for one reason or another. With the concrete floor, we just throw down a little straw and bring in a water bucket and some hay and we have a special suite for a critter in need.

In the house, we also have several awful windows that need to be covered up in good thick plastic. If we didn’t, that room would be almost unbearably cold. We would love to replace those windows, but it’s not quite in the budget yet. Hopefully, soon!

I removed my heavy curtains from my office window after we doctored it up. I want as much light in there as possible in the morning, even if it’s diffused light. It’s kind of ironic… during the spring and summer, I want to block a bit of the light, especially in the morning and have these dark heavy curtains. Yet come fall and winter? I want all the light I can get! I also have hung curtains in the openings into my little office and with a good little space heater going, that space gets so nice and toasty warm!

And last but not least, Duke Kitty got a new warm fleece blanket in his cuddle basket in the mud room. I would love to have him indoors but he is a barn cat and just hates to be inside and even when he is, he is not very good at knowing where the potty is. I think he would much rather be outside, roaming about, checking on his farm. But I do know he likes the fairly warm mudroom and his special basket to cuddle up in and snooze away the really cold nights. He has his food bowl and water dish and is pretty content.

The good thing is that plasticing up the homestead, including all the barns and animal shelters, marks the end of our major outdoor projects. It’s just too cold and too hard to do a lot of things out in the weather. We went around, picking up things and gathering fallen branches or raking up the last bit of leaves this week. All the orphaned tools and things got put away. I was very surprised to find that I left one of my nice hoes in the garden! Yikes! That got put away. All the animal water troughs got dumped and scrubbed good and then refilled. We fixed a couple weak spots in the paddock fence and just finished up everything we wanted to accomplish. Now we just have to keep the animals fed, watered and comfortable through the winter and do basic chores and occasional must do maintenance from damage or weather. In a way, it’s an easier chore routine, but the weather just makes things a little harder all the way around. So, removing the projects helps to make it easy and not too hard on everyone.

The animals miss romping around, I’m sure, but some are quite happy with the winter schedule. Miss Ebony and her daughter Cheyene are very very content in the hog hut with several bales of straw to make their huge nest in, as well as the warm hut, food delivered to them in there and time to take a long winter siesta for several months! They only go outside to get a sip of water and do their bathroom duty and then they rush back in to the warm hut! We would give them their water in the hut but they are so messy that they make a big wet mud wallow and that can get nasty and freeze up. It’s good for them to get a little fresh air and helps to reinforce the potty corner. All good.

The ponies would rather die than spend too much time inside and they have grown incredibly thick wooly coats to support their decision. It’s kind of funny, they have the nicest barn, thickly bedded and warm, yet they prefer to be out in the paddock and pasture. Being Shetlands, they think nothing of a cold stiff wind with icy rain beating down on them… in fact, I think they relish it. They turn their little butts to the wind and just munch away at their hay and feed, enjoying the brisk feeling!

The sheep and goats have a lovely barn as well, and when it is all covered in, it can get very cozy as well. Of course, there is plenty of good ventilation in all our buildings. It’s not a good idea to make them totally weather proof, because many farm animals will get sick in too warm of an environment in the winter. They need protection from the rain and snow, and a wind block, but good ventilation. Thankfully, all our buildings fit that bill. Comfy, but not too smothering. We use the deep bedding method of heating our barns. Instead of mucking out the areas during the heavy cold, we just add more bedding every week or so. The animals like to paw through and dig in the bedding, making nests and wallows to stay warm in but also turning over the material so that it composts. The heat rising off the compost helps to warm the space naturally.

I was suspect at first… I thought, this is just the lazy person’s excuse to stay in the warm farm house and avoid mucking out… but after the first winter here, I learned. Every building was at least 20 degrees warmer than outside. Sometimes even 30 degrees! There was no smell, no bugs because of the cold. And in the early spring, when you finally dig out the barns you are gifted with the most beautiful rich, dark, fine compost! The gardens love it! Sure, it does take a week to get all our spaces cleaned out, but the weather is usually beautiful and you get such lovely compost as well as keeping your animals warm and content all winter long. It’s one of the best things about homesteading!

Now that all our outside projects are in the dreaming of spring parking lot, it’s time to turn our attention to the inside of our farm house. Hopefully this season we can get some much needed cleaning and painting done, as well as some serious organizing and some other repairs. I can’t wait! When it’s nice outside, we just want to be outside! So the house gets a little neglected. But now, the fixing and decorating bug has hit and we’ve got a few fun ideas to spruce up the joint! We’ll see how it all goes! Can’t wait…

That’s our fall round up report. Done outside for awhile. Ready to regroup and start on the inside! Hope all is going well with you all! What are some of the fall rituals you have around your place to get ready for winter? Would love it if you’d share a few with us!

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Cheese from your own goat… priceless!

Posted on November 13, 2014 by MobymomNovember 13, 2014

Everyone is familiar with the credit card commercials… the ones that go something like this:

Hand Raising Bottle Baby Goat Doe $75

A year of feeding and raising, and 5 months of pregnancy $200

Making Cheese from your own Dairy Goat, 18 months in the making… Priceless!

I have to admit, this is one of those instances that I have to say, it was worth every moment and cost! Do be able to go out, milk your own sweet doe, bring a quart of beautiful fresh milk in the house and make your own dairy products like cheese and caramel… whoa baby, that is a pretty darn cool thing if you have a dairy desire dream like I do.

I have been always interested in a milk animal and if you know me, you know that I have always thought that I wanted a cow. A sweet brown Jersey, with a flower name like Petunia or Cornflower or, well, maybe Buttercup!

But every time I started to contemplate a cow, the costs and resources required just seemed so, well, HUGE! First off that sweet cow would cost easily $1,000 if you didn’t want to raise one from a calf. And then there was the whole pregnancy thing… cows have to give birth before you can harvest milk from them. (Unless, of course, you could luck out and get a cow already in milk, but that usually means more moola!) And if you go through the whole pregnancy and delivery thing, and everything turns out well, then you can start to milk… of course, after you decide what to do with this giant huge calf! Sure you can feed the calf from the mom’s milk and other various situations, but it’s all something to consider. And then there is the feed and pasture required for your ton of dairy machine… and the great amounts of manure your sweetheart will create. And of course, there is the lovely milk and cream… daily milking will bring you several gallons a day.

Just too overwhelming, especially for a small family that doesn’t hardly go through a gallon of milk a week! So a milk goat is just the perfect gateway animal to dairy desire! Small, tidy, good companion, easy keeper… a nice dairy goat will give up to a gallon a day, but most breeds you can go to once a day milking and see a nice couple quarts a day. Perfect! And if you save up your lovely milk for a few days, it’s easy to have a gallon or two for making cheese!!!

I got to make my first batch of cheese from my sweet goatie girl, Princess Buttercup. She eagerly gave me a nice bit of high cream milk and I decided to make a nice whole milk ricotta. It’s so easy! And you can make it with whole cow’s milk as well, straight from the grocery store!

Place a gallon of room temperature milk in a nice heavy pan. I usually use a stainless steel pot but mine was left out back in the barn and it was too cold to go and retrieve it.

Just gently warm the milk up to 180 degrees. It can be a little more or a little less, but not a lot. Making cheese is a very careful science, something that you really do need to pay attention to and fuss over a wee bit. Different temperatures and different cultures make many different types of lovely cheese!

Once you reach 180 degrees, turn off the heat and add in your citric acid. Citric acid is commonly found where you get your canning supplies in most major stores. It’s a jar, not unlike a spice jar, and has a powdered citric acid in it. For a gallon of milk, I add half a tablespoon to about an 1/8th of a cup of warm water. Stir, let it hydrate for a moment or two. I usually make it up as the milk is heating. Once you reach your temperature, just slowly pour in the citric acid and give it a nice stir. It should begin to separate into curds and whey right away. If you are using store milk, try and stay away from Ultra Heat Pasteurized milk as it can sometimes not separate properly. Normally pasteurized milk is fine. You can always add a wee bit more citric acid if you don’t see good separation. I’ve never had mine not work… whether store milk or goat milk… but have heard of it.

Let the mixture sit still for about 10 to 15 minutes until it is nice and ready. If you give it a light stir, you will clearly see large lumps of curds in the sort of yellowy whey.

I use a piece of damp, clean cheesecloth and lay it into a colander. And then I place that colander into a larger bowl to collect the whey. You can ladle out the mixture slowly, or just carefully pour the whole pot into the colander. Either way, just go slowly, as the bowl will fill fastly and you could have a bit of a mess. Not that I would know anything about that.

I have a little cheese strainer that I love and I use that instead of a colander often. Drain the whey off your little cheese bundle and set the whey aside. I often set my cheese in another small dish or bowl to let it sit for a few hours and drain a bit more. You can lightly press the cheese, but this is a nice soft cheese and you don’t want to make it super dry. I usually find I have to pour off the whey from the second bowl every half hour or so. The more whey you let naturally drain, the better tasting your ricotta will be. You can give the whey to your chickens, hogs or dogs… or keep the stuff for baking, smoothies and other edible healthy processes. We give our to our chickens and hogs… they adore it!

After four to six hours of draining, you have a beautiful little bowl of ricotta cheese! If you like it very soft and moist, you can add a few tablespoons of heavy cream to it and stir away. If not, just use it as it comes, which is amazing and delicious in so many pasta dishes! You can salt your cheese a bit, very lightly with a good stir, or even at the curd and whey point, but I don’t. I prefer to leave it saltless so that I can add salt to the final dish. Ricotta is a carrier cheese… it doesn’t have a ton of taste, if you ask me, but a lovely texture and finish to anything you blend with it. Wonderful in Italian pasta dishes! You can sweeten it with cannoli deserts and make a clever dip for veggies and breads by drizzling with a good balsamic vinegar and a bit of fresh chopped green onions and garlic! It’s a very understanding cheese!!!

I just love that I made it from my own goat’s milk!!! Yeah Team!

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