Milking Time

Ladies of the morning. Here I prepare Ginger's teat dip after milking her.

Wake Up! It's 6:30 in the morning and time to milk the goat. Thank goodness John has made the coffee already. I had decided long ago that I wouldn't be one of those farmers who woke up at 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning to begin milking. Why on earth would you do that when you could do the same thing at say... 9 in the morning? Now I know. If any of you have ever breastfed a child (or know someone who has), you know what happens when you go too long without feeding your little babies! You get so full of milk that it feels like you'll explode, and it hurts so much! Not to mention that it's really difficult to get milk out of an udder that is beyond capacity. You can't just milk whenever you feel like it. Hard lesson Number 87. If you get out to milk at the right time, you can get a nice full udder that's easy to milk out. At this point I am milking once a day (the morning), and getting 5 to 5.5 pounds of milk. This is about 2.5 quarts. The bucklings keep Ginger milked the rest of the day, and then the little fellas are put in their own pen for the night (at which time Ginger is able to replenish her milk supply for me). After the bucklings go to their new farm in a couple of weeks, I'll have double the amount of milk each day, as I'll be milking Ginger in the evening too - the boys will no longer be around to do it for me.

foreground is Ginseng, Sycamore in the rear