Tripp didn't make it.  I HATE this part of animal-ownership! :sigh:

Had to go to the office today, so no cheese - but I did whip up a batch of shaving soap.  One of my customers buys 3 or 4 bars every time he sees me, and I discovered I'm out.  I won't see him again until October (maybe), so it's all good - I have time for it to cure.

And I found something interesting in the Dragonsblood:

Do you *see* it?  That's the coolest swirl I've ever done - I never would have expected to have a DRAGON in my soap!!!!!  Unfortunately, I have no idea how it occurred, and it's the only one....and no, this particular bar is NOT going to be sold.  Or used.  :lol:

Here, let me give you a view of the rest of the bars:

The yellow-and-green is Cedar and Saffron (we need to come up with a name for it), the red-and-green is Dragons Blood (soap name:  Chimera, because a chimera is a goat-headed dragon. :wink:), and the solid rose is Rosehip-Jasmine (soap name:  Grandma's Flower Garden) - it was supposed to be a rose-in-natural swirl, but, well.....stuff happens.  It's sill good soap, just not as "pretty" as I wanted.  (Huh.  In the photo, I can see a faint swirl in the front one.....guess I need to reserve judgement until it cures.  Sometimes the colors shift a little bit.)

Today's cheese:  Wensleydale.  The first batch of Wensleydale I did kinda flopped - it didn't press into a nice, coherent block; it was just pieces of curd squished together.  Not sure why - usually 50 lbs of pressure makes a nice, solid block - but there was no way I could wax it neatly, so it got tossed and I started a new batch.  :shrug:

Yesterday DH made me a lovely batch of chocolate cherry ice cream.  :mmmmmm:  8 oz of Penzey's Dutch Process Cocoa, 2 oz of Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate, 2 bottles of Marashino Cherries, Fresh Goat's milk, Cream......:mmmmmmmmm:  It's yummy!  And all MINE, since no one else in this house likes cherries.  :heh:

Tripp is hanging in there - he took a little more milk this AM.  I've got a lady coming out Wednesday to look at the  2 Alpine bucklings; she's told me she's got her crate in her car, so she's pretty sure she'll be taking one home.  :yippee!:  I got an email last night from someone else looking for a buckling......I HOPE they both sell.  That'll leave me with 3 boys to re-home....

I need to go work on labels.  Fun stuff!

We have a sick goat - a buckling.  Unfortunately, we have too many boys, so I'm not going to do anything heroic for him.  It's a sad part of this life - the boys aren't needed, and they aren't worth as much as the girls - even though they are half your herd!  :sigh:

It's one of Risky's...the pretty one.  Jordie (we call him "Tripp") has runny poo, isn't eating, and has lost a lot of weight in a very short amount of time.  I'm thinking it's dehydration - the waterer was FILTHY (my son has been chastised - it's his job to keep the waterers filled and clean, and he's been slacking) and I think Tripp decided it was too nasty to drink.  We've moved him into the kid area in the barn, with fresh water; I've given him a dose of Banamine (for any pain), a dose of Oxytetracycline (in case it's a bug), a couple of doses of Thiamine (for his appetite...and just in case it's polio) AND I treated him with Baycox again (it's 1 dose for cocci......but just in case.)  We're now in wait-and-see mode.  (DH said he just took another 1/3 of a bottle - yes, he's weaned, but we're still giving the boys 1 bottle/day - because we have the milk.  This is a good sign...I hope!)

Cheese:  Today is Manchego.  I just ordered the culture for Swiss, so I'll be making some of that soon.

Soap:  The dragon's blood is AWESOME.  The Cedar and Saffron is nice....but Grandma's Flower Garden kinda flopped.  It's still good soap, but my swirl...didn't.  I have a lovely batch of rose-colored soap.  :lol:  I know what happened - as I was getting ready to swirl the rose into the natural, my left hand lost it's grip and I ended up kinda dumping the whole container of rose into the rest.  So....no swirl - but it's a lovely shade of rose, and it smells great. :lol:

Today it was Monterrey Jack - but I think (no, I KNOW) I screwed it up.

Today, instead of cheese, I soaped.  I refilled Grandma's Flower Garden, then decided to play.  The other 2 batches are Dragon's Blood (nice, dark green with red swirls; smells DIVINE!) and Cedar and Saffron (Lemon yellow with grass green swirls).  I'll post 'em to the soap page in 4 weeks!

I decided, after a LOT of thought, that I needed to have a farm-specific blog.  So...here we go.  I'm still going to be posting to my LJ (and there's still a tab at the top of the website for it!), but this will be for farm-specific posts.