This month we pay tribute to our unsung heroes – the breeding bucks. All of these precious little babies wouldn’t be around here if it weren’t for you.  Our ladies have to have kids in order to make milk and none of it is possible without the boys. From September through November these guys work tirelessly making sure that our kidding season is a success. They selflessly give everything they have so that we can have milk for cheese.

Working behind the scenes for nothing more than a pound of grain and a pat on the head, they continue to perform time and time again. While you may be thinking that they only have to work for three months out of the year, and that they must have it pretty good lounging around for the rest of the year, there is more to being breeding stock than meets the eye. Aerobic exercise and weight training combined with a strict vegan diet are a must in order to build strength, stamina and just plain look great for the next season.

So, thank you Charlie Chan, Zorro, Maybach, Cheerio and Cargo.

April’s Goat of the Month is Franklin, also known as Frank. Frank is a beautiful Alpine goat with a striking black stripe right down her back.  We chose Frank as April’s GOTM because she had her two babies on April 1^st and exactly on her due date.  What a good goat.

Franklin wanted to be the center of attention on her delivery day, so even though she was in the maternity pens all day, she waited until all other six goats kidded before she started.  Always a talker, Franklin made it well known that her babies were on their way.

Although we don’t encourage gossiping among the staff, Franklin can always be found in a huddle with a few other does chatting away.  She’s got the inside scoop on the farm and we definitely know where to go when we need to get to the bottom of any employee conflict.  She’s always got the story.  In her free time Frank likes chatting on her cell phone to her girlfriends on the Front Range.  As GOTM she will get extra minutes.

The March Goat of the Month is Arroyo.  Arroyo is a six-year-old Saanen who produces about one gallon of milk a day.  Arroyo is our herd queen.  She is strong, sophisticated and wise.  She leads by example, never through the use of force – AKA: head butting.  She is always available to lend an ear and give advice to the younger does or to solve any conflict within the herd.  The only thing she asks for in return is a scratch on the neck after milking.

In place of an Employee of the Month, Avalanche Cheese Company elects a Goat of the Month.  Every month each farm employee nominates a goat, the candidate names are posted and the goat with the most votes, wins.  Winners receive a daily spa treatment, including massage and udder balm; pedicure; first in line at milking; extra grain rations at milking; and a $50 gift certificate at Paonia Farm and Home.

Mocha’s Girl is the Goat of the Month for February.  She is a four-year-old Alpine goat who made her debut in the milking line last spring.  Mocha’s Girl is one of our older first time moms.  She was three when she had her first kidding.  She had fancied herself an honest to goodness coffee-swilling, hard-living, wild, rodeo goat.  (Her mama was a Barista, thus the name.)

She started the milking season jumping around considerably during milkings.  After a lot of TLC, time, patience, support from the other does, and agreeing to give up caffeine, she was able to calm down during milking and is now one of our most steady producers.  She gives about 1.5 gallons per day.

In her spare time she enjoys barrel racing, calf roping, funnel cakes and popcorn.  Mochas girl is hoping to have twin girls in March.

As well as being an awesome dairy goat Uno is an internationally known model.  Known as the Sophia Loren of the goat-modeling world, she is often flying off to exotic destinations for photo shoots and still manages to be promptly back to work at 5 a.m.

Uno is a strict vegan and an aerobics fanatic. During the winter she enjoys laying low, watching Netflix and dreaming up names for her kids. Her favorite color is green and she loves the smell of freshly cut alfalfa.

In place of an Employee of the Month, Avalanche Cheese Company elects a Goat of the Month.  Every month each farm employee nominates a goat, the candidate names are posted and the goat with the most votes, wins.  Winners receive a daily spa treatment, including massage and udder balm; pedicure; first in line at milking; extra grain rations at milking; and a $50 gift certificate at Paonia Farm and Home.

• Likes – Hiking in the mountains, eating wildflowers, a good mani-pedi, curling up with a steamy romance novel and stinky bucks.
• Dislikes – Mean people, cows and stinky bucks.
• Favorite Meal – Fresh alfafa and red clover shoots with sun flower heads and burdock topped with toasted oats and barley, molasses and apple cider vinaigrette. She’s a real foodie.
• Favorite Actor – George Clooney
• Favorite Movie – Men Who Stare at Goats
• Favorite Season – Halloween and Breeding Season

Nelly plans to spend her winters in Boca Raton once her 401K has rebounded.

I love Thanksgiving.  Who doesn’t love a holiday that features food right up front.  But even I realize that this holiday has more going on than food.  I would like to take a moment to give thanks to all the baby goats that had a short but happy life on our farm and now give us our beautiful sausages.

I am/was a city girl with a pretty limited understanding of the relationship between cheese and meat, so I’d like to explain to those of you who don’t understand the connection how it works and why some of our animals become food.  In order to get milk from an animal that animal has to give birth.  Goats give birth every year and we milk them for about 10 months.   Most goats have two babies, and about half of those babies are boys.  Boys don’t make milk and we can’t breed all the goats that are born every year so some girls don’t continue their careers after year one.

Different farms have different philosophies for how they deal with the offspring of dairy animals.  Some farms slaughter the boys at birth, some sell them at the sale barn once they are weaning age and others use them for meat.  We try to sell all the animals we can to happy homes, but with 450 babies each year, that model quickly becomes impractical.  We choose to raise the babies on our farm and give them a nice, albeit short, life.  They have access to pasture and plenty of room to run, climb, jump and be goats.  In the late summer or early fall we take them to our local USDA facility to be slaughtered and made into sausage we sell in our local markets.

We are proud of our sausages and hope you’ll help to support local meats.

Following is a recipe for Goat Sausage Stuffing/Dressing with Green Apples.

I grew up eating dressing with my Thanksgiving turkey, but if you want to use this as stuffing, go right ahead.   I ‘m a weird blend of North/South, so Jimmy Dean would have been the typical sausage we used for dressing, but our Avalanche Farm & Dairy Pork and Goat Sausages are awesome in this dressing.

Ingredients
5 cups of bread (preferably stale) cut into small cubes
1 pound Avalanche Farm & Dairy Pork and Goat Sausages
1 medium onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 Tbsp sage, chopped
2 tsp. rosemary, chopped
2 tsp. thyme, chopped
1 tsp. salt
1 – 2 Green Apples, chopped
½ bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 cooked turkey liver, chopped (optional)
¾ cup chicken stock
4 Tbsp. butter, melted

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Spread the bread on one or two baking sheets and bake for about 5 minutes or until toasted.  Transfer the bread to a large bowl.

Add a glug of olive oil to a large sauté pan, and sauté the onions and celery and 1 tsp of salt over medium high heat until soft, about 5 minutes.   Remove the sausage from the casing and break it up into the sauté pan.  Continue cooking until the sausage is browned.   Add the sage, rosemary and thyme and continue to cook 1 minute longer.

Pour sausage mixture over the bread and mix in apples, parsley and liver if using.  Toss in the stock and melted butter.  Add more salt and pepper to taste.  If using for stuffing stuff loosely into the cavity of your bird.  If using as dressing place in a casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy on top.

Goat of the Month
October/November 2011

Name:  Crumpet
Breed:  Mixed Saanen/Alpine
Age: 1 ½      
Milk: First year milker, averaging 7 pounds a day.
Temperament: With her lovely attitude and overall sweet demeanor, Crumpet is a favorite with all the milkers.
Hobbies:  Crumpet is an avid rock climber.  She does most of her climbing in the Black Canyon.  Big walls are her specialty.

To test out our lunch idea we recently hosted a group from Galaxy Bike and Sport in Paonia at our farm.  We grilled Avalanche Farm and Dairy Pork and Goat Sausages, threw together an assortment of our cheeses and a local greens salad and, viola!, delicious lunch.  We dined al fresco where we could watch the goats lolling around the pasture with Mount Lamborn in the back.

If you have any questions about biking in around Paonia, give Jason or Regna a call at Galaxy Bike and Sport.  They have gear, rental bikes, bikes for sale and they can recommend all sorts of great rides – mountain and road.

For more information about hosting your own lunch or event on the farm check out the Farm Tours section of our website.

Pictured here is a delicious combination of matzah, tomato sauce, caramelized onions, Spanish cured chorizo, some grated Parmesean and Cabra Blanca cheese.  Kevin, my fellow cheese maker, brought Cabra to my attention as a pizza cheese.  You can’t believe how well this melts and it’s just delicious.

You can finish up your pizza party with a dessert pizza – break up some dark chocolate, almonds and Chevre and sprinkle it around the pizza .  Bake the crust (it will puff up wherever you don’t have any ingredients, but that’s OK.)  While it’s still hot spread some dark chocolate sauce or cajeta (this just happens to be a new product we’re working on – caramelized goat milk) over the top.  Top this crazy mess with whipped cream and you’re done.

The recipe for my pizza dough (aka matzah) is posted on our Facebook page.