Information on cow milk and Ice cream.

I have endless respect for the majority of cow-dairy farmers – they work so bloody hard. Every day, milking 3 or 4 times a day. Massive amounts of cow to feed and take care of, huge expenses, only one purchaser (Milk Marketing Board), having to hit a specific quota without having too much or too little milk. Most cow dairies are BIG business with a minimum of $3 million in milk sales a year. I respect the job they do.

          I am also a big fan of milk and milk products. I LOVE our goat milk. I eat butter, cheese, yogurt, cream, and kefir, just about every goat/cow product. I like sheep’s cheese, buffalo cheese, and love trying other sources of cheese.

The 1000L tank at our goat dairy (it's tiny!) We had to have it moved in and then finish the building (April 2011)

          My main concern is what happens to the cow milk once it reaches the dairy processing plant. In preparing and planning for our gelato business, Karen (my business partner) took the Dairy Worker Course from BCIT. It was extremely enlightening.

          For example, when cow milk arrives at the dairy plant it is ripped apart, using huge centrifuges, into its component parts. All the cream is taken out, proteins are removed, and everything is broken out. Then, if the plant needs some 2% milk, they put the components back together, they add some whey, some skim milk, some cream, following a formula, finish with adding Vitamin A & D and the whole batch is homogenized to force it all back together. Nothing very natural about this process.

          Commercial ice cream is a matter of following formulas, not about real food. Say you want to make a high end, 10% butter fat ice cream. The legal requirements in calling a product ice cream means that the end product can have only so much emulsifiers and so much chemical additives, so there is 5 % or so, then the legal minimum of actual “re-made milk”, usually skim so they don’t put anything valuable in it. Add artificial flavourings (which is purchased as boxes of syrup), mix, cook, and cool.

Now the fun part. Using a batch freezer, you can whip in as much or as little air as you desire. Therefore, for a higher end product, you would whip in about 60% air. For a cheap ice cream you whip in 200%+  air which means for every 1 litre of base you will get (at least) 2 liters of ice cream, doubling your saleable product.

LegatoGelato doesn’t alter, rip apart, or modify our milk. We use a bucket milking system that doesn’t run the milk thru miles of plastic pipe. From the udder to the sanitized stainless steel bucket is about 6 inches. The stainless bucket is poured gently through a filter into a sanitized bucket and placed in a tank full of very cold/almost frozen water. Then we take it to the Canadian Cultured Dairy Inc plant, pour the milk from the buckets into the large pasteurizing kettle, mixed with gelato ingredients, pasteurized, and poured into different buckets to cool.

We handle the milk gently as it is a delicate product, and we want to preserve the integrity & qualities of it.

The liquid gelato is poured into our batch freezer, gently churned for 7 minutes with only 30% air added to it. If we didn’t add air, you would not be able to eat it – it would freeze into a solid block. We want to balance the rich flavour with spoonability.

Then the frozen gelato is scooped into the pint or single serving containers, sealed, and placed in the freezers, ready to sell to our discerning customers.

Take 600 eggs......

We are getting closer to launching our wonderful gelato!

          Karen and I spent a few hours after I finished work yesterday (Wed) mixing up part of our recipe in preparation for making our gelato base. Regulations require we make all the coulis and base mixtures at an inspected commercial kitchen – we rent the kitchen at Lush Valley, a community organization in the Comox Valley.

We are going to be making about 300 litres of the white base. The base is our milk, pasteurized at Canadian Cultured Dairy Inc in Royston, with the rest of the ingredients to make it deletectable. Canadian Cultured Dairy Inc. is the home of Tree Island Gourmet Yogurt, and we have our milk pasteurized and make our gelato there as well.

Construction in process at the Canadian Culture Dairy plant

Once the base is blended, pasteurized, and cooled, we mix in our delicious fruit coulis and chocolate sauces. Then into the batch freezer to mix and freeze.

Karen next to our amazing Gelato batch Freezer.

 

          I have always enjoyed cooking but it is a whole new kettle of fish to make a recipe that starts with 600 large organic hens’ eggs. It takes a fair bit of cracking. We are doing about 1 dozen at a time into a bowl, carefully checking for any shell chips, making sure that all the eggs look good and aren’t too old; then they are poured into the Hobart mixer. We weigh out the organic sugar and put that in, layering it on top of our precious organic cornstarch to keep the cornstarch from becoming a big cloud once the mixer starts. The Vancouver Island Sea Salt is added in with the sugar or cornstarch; it is a very small quantity but important for rounding out the flavour.

          This lovely mix looks like the makings of butter tart filling without any raisins – it’s thick, rich and golden (from the lovely eggs and the tawny brown of the organic sugar). It looks good enough to eat. But I restrained myself.

           I love making our gelato. Every step is putting together lovely, yummy ingredients and making something better. The organic sugar is a gorgeous golden brown and flows like sand on the beach. Our organic hens eggs are a warm brown with tiny dark brown specks on most of them, the yolks’ colour is between a brilliant yellow and a ripe orange. The Ironwood Farm blackberries are so dark that they are also indigo going to black, if they weren’t glossy they would disappear. Beaver Meadow’s cranberries range in colour from a slightly pink tinged berry though the red spectrum to a deep, rich ruby red, like jewels.

 

When the coulis are cooking they have an amazing scent that beats ANY perfume hands down. Its fragrance is mouth watering & practically transcendent. I just have to check the taste by spooning out a bit for myself. The coulis are made from berries, organic sugar and organic lemon juice. We use much less sugar than you would use for jam but its still sweet. The lemon juice gives the coulis a brightness that brings out the sharp notes of flavour in the berries themselves.

 

It's a colourful wonderful adventure in taste and texture. Please join us!

 

Some Facts about Gelato

LegatoGelato

          Smooth Taste…Island Pace

Did you know that there are Gelato Universities in Italy and the University of Guelph has offered a one-week course in making ice cream for the last 50+ years? Gelato and Ice Cream have been popular for hundreds of years but it is since the industrial revolution that refrigeration has made it accessible to the general population; the love of the cool, creamy treat has just exploded.

Ice Cream & Gelato are quite different. Gelato, especially our goat milk legatogelato, has much less fat. LegatoGelato has more flavour as well, it is denser and served a bit warmer than ice cream, so you have a blast of flavour in your mouth.

Regular ice cream, especially budget brands have cow milk cream, cow milk (usually powdered), sugar or corn syrup or straight glucose, maybe some sort of egg product, flavour (generally artificial) and binders & emulsifiers. All the ingredients are mixed up into a liquid, pasteurized and then the liquid is put into a batch freezer. The batch freezer stirs and adds air while the liquid is frozen to become ice cream. The more air that is whipped in, the more ice cream you get. So some manufacturers will make 3 cups of ice cream from one cup of their liquid base.

LEGATOGELATO is NOT whipped into a frenzy. LegatoGelato has air slowly incorporated into it but only about 30%, so for a cup of base you will get one and a third cups of legatogelato. This makes the legatogelato significantly denser. We also add lots of flavour, I mix three parts fruit mix to five parts of my base. My legatogelato base has NO artificial binders or emulsifiers. Nothing is in our legatogelato that you wouldn’t find in your own kitchen. It is REAL food made from REAL ingredients to make a wonderful, tasty REAL treat.

I take whole, pure goat milk, from my very own goats, add organic eggs from happy hens, organic cornstarch, organic sugar and some local sea salt, mix it up, cook and then pasteurize it. This is Our Base! It tastes wonderful in the liquid state. The base sits overnight and gets thicker as the organic cornstarch works its magic.

The next day I mix in our flavours. We hand-make our fruit flavours from fresh local fruits and berries. I try to get local organic berries first and then get the local berries if there isn’t enough of the organic kind around. We clean the fruit or berries then cook up with organic sugar and organic lemon juice – that’s it! This yummy mix is frozen & used as the base is ready.

The combined base and fruit mix gets poured into our Gelato Batch Freezer. We have an Italian machine – a Carpiggianni. The machine mixes air into the mix slowly and freezes the mix in about 15 minutes. Then into the containers and down to the freezer.

It’s a very straightforward process.

A clean pure product made from pure foods.

Our LegatoGelato is a real food.

Sunlight on the wet coast

If you have ever lived on in the Pacific Northwest then you probably have experienced the upswing in your mood when you happen to get a sunny day in the winter. We are experiencing the 3^rd day of sunshine now and people are happy, singing, & bouncing around the office. It’s an amazing change from last week.

          For those of you who are unfamiliar with a northwest coastal winter, all I can say is heavy gray clouds and daily rain for months. People that grow up here don’t carry umbrellas – we have coats that keep the rain out (hoods attached; of course). And anyways, either it’s not raining hard enough to bother carrying an umbrella or it’s too windy. I think Gor-tex was invented out here.

          The constant grey seems to affect people who have moved here the most. You really can go for 60 to 90 days without seeing the sun, just grey clouds.

          Why do people live here; well it’s a warm wet. You can grow a garden 9 to 10 months a year and with an unheated greenhouse, you can grow plants year round. You don’t have to shovel rain – ever. Rain doesn’t pile up on the roof or buildings and pull off your gutters. You don’t have to worry about your tongue sticking to anything. You don’t need special tires to drive in it. Planes don’t need to be “de-rained”; they fly just fine when they are wet. The moist air is lovely for our skin, and we don’t have to worry about UV damage most of the year. I have a snow shovel but I use it to clean out the garage and dairy, it’s great for shavings and straw. You don’t need to invest in a block heater or a snow blower.

          Unfortunately, thanks to global warming, we are getting snowed on in the winter. And this is not light snow, fluffy snow, granular snow. No, it is heavy, wet snow so it’s like driving on slushy ice. You can’t leave it on the greenhouse or on trees as it breaks everything. You have to wear all your rain gear & warm clothes underneath so you are always too hot outside, and if you don’t – you are soaking wet in minutes. Soggy snow is brutal to shovel, as I have to do to get out to the animals. It fills up goats water dishes and they stand, staring at it – not drinking. Plus they won’t walk in wet snow unless they have to. So yuck, yuck, yuck. AND it seems to be happening every year! The outrage! The horror!

          Okay, it’s not that bad. Snow makes everything very pretty and covers all the mud and garbage. The world looks fresh and new. If it’s cold, below freezing, snow is fine – fluffy and light, you can use a broom to brush off the walk way and a path to the barns. Makes an awesome crunchy noise when you walk on it and it is easy to drive on – behaves like sand or gravel. The animals will play in it, people play in it, and you don’t end up soaking wet. It is easy to stay warm, a couple layers and you are good to go.

          However, I digress, as I am prone to do. One item you will notice if you live here is how many people have the SAD lights and use them. SAD is seasonal affective disorder and seems to be a result of the lack of strong sunlight. The lights provide a sunlight substitute and help buoy up people’s mood. Many west coasters travel during the winter, heading to Mexico or Hawaii for bask in the sun for a week or two. We have many snowbirds as well. Many residents flock off down to Arizona for the winter. We also have a bunch of snowbirds flocking in from the Prairie Provinces, to get away from the bitter cold.

          I think it is all in what you are used too. As I said, I grew up here and love it. You also may want to cultivate the attitude of “Growing where you are planted”. It’s not the place that makes you happy, it is you.

Jan 2011 - Happy Christmas eh?

Choices

I remember going to the grocery store as a kid – a large chain store, probably Safeway, and there were two kinds of apples; red and green. Occasionally there was a yellow apple but only seasonally. There was one kind of orange and iceberg lettuce. Oh yeah, more than one kind of potato as well.

          Now there is a huge selection, I would guess about 10 varieties of apples, four types of oranges, many types of lettuce, and at least three kinds of potatoes. My tired brain almost seizes up with the choices. Does anyone else feel that way?

2011 a good year for Tomatoes

          Anyone been in the yogurt section lately? Holy moly – there must be 40 feet of cooler space and six shelves of yogurt. Pre-biotic, pro-biotic, with fibre, with granola, fat-free, sugar-free, plain, flavoured, stirred, layered, unmixed, soy yogurt, organic (YEAH!) and even (occasionally) goat milk yogurt (YEAH again). If I wanted to buy some, I would stand there, stunned, trying to find the brand I liked. Now, of course, I am eating Tree Island Gourmet Yogurt (www.cultured-dairy.com) when I don’t have any of my own.

          Every part of food sales has diversified with the introduction of produce and products from all over the world. I am truly amazed at the country of origins of the products. I cannot believe how fresh produce from New Zealand, China and South America looks when it arrives at the grocery store.

          I will not buy any foodstuffs that are grown in China. The environmental conditions in most of industrial China are very polluted and the standards are not anywhere close to Canadian standards. Heavy metals are ubiquitous in the soils from all the industrial activity. It’s just not safe. I refrain from buying from Mexico and South America as the standards are practically non-existent and the use of pesticides and herbicides is rampant. Washing the produce doesn’t get the chemicals out of the cellular structure of the plants.

          Local is just much better. It might not be available year round but who really needs fresh strawberries in December? Eating seasonally has been the norm for most of human existence. We have thrived eating this way. I have treats; I eat bananas (organic) and some other imported food. The vanilla beans for our honey-vanilla gelato are from Madagascar – they are organic and fair trade as well.

          It’s all about choices and being informed. Try to find out where your food is from; get local if you can, get organic if you can’t get local.

Are you prepared?

Wow – hasn’t the series of earthquakes on the west coast of British Columbia and the super storm Sandy been a couple of dire warnings for everyone to be prepared.

          BC got off lucky with the earthquakes, not even much local damage, tsunami warnings and advisories were broadcast but the sea rise was less than one meter (a meter is 39 inches) and in most cases only half a meter.

          The affect of Sandy on the east coast of the US and Canada is still being felt as I write this but the worst is over for most places. Eight million people, or more, are out of electricity and it’s getting cold.

Nov. 20, 2011 - snow trying to take down the

green house.

          Have you been out of power for any length of time? One November about 6 or 7 years ago, our power was out for 5 days. As we are on a well, no power means no water but it was raining and sleeting and we were able to collect enough water for the animals. No water means no using the toilets, no showers, no running water.

          It takes days to stop trying to flick on the light switches and to try and get water from the sinks – it is amazing how automatic those actions are and how ingrained into our behavior. It’s hard not to use the toilet as well. Think about it – what would you use instead?

          At the end of 5 days we had a filthy house, tons of laundry piled up and nothing done. With having to boil water we collected from the rain, heating water for dishes, heating water for bathing, bringing in firewood, chopping firewood and taking care of the critters (pre-dairy days, only 5 goats to milk), plus working there was NO time for anything else. Basic tasks took up all the time before and after work.

          We are pretty prepared and the power outage was localized to our area, not in town, which meant gasoline, groceries, take-out, and showers were still available. The people in New Jersey aren’t going to have basic services for a while – it will be tough for them.

          Think about what you need for your animals as you prepare. How will you move them? What will you feed them? How will you keep them under control if you are in an evacuation center with 500 other people?

If you have livestock you need to have pre-arranged alternate locations to move the animals to AND ways to get them there. We have spoken to another local farmer about moving all the goats onto his property if we need to leave because of forest fires. That will be the only disaster that will get us off the farm; we are fairly well set up for anything else.

Babies always need someone to care for them!

 

          Do not expect anybody to come and help you, especially the government. The scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. I work for the government and that phrase sends chills of dread through me.

 Don’t rely on someone else, take matters into your own hands and don’t expect any help from the outside world. Just look at the natural disasters that have happen over the last few years – Haiti is still a mess, Japan has not mitigated the nuclear problems,  people are still in shelters over 18 months later – and you need to become responsible for you, your family, and your animals. Nothing less will leave you vulnerable to suffering, injury or worse.

Who said things only happen in Three’s?

 

          My mother’s mum, my grandmother was English (from Leeds in Yorkshire), born in 1903 and extremely superstitious. She’s been gone a long time now but her inculcation of us lives on. I wouldn’t say that I am particularly superstitious myself but I err on the side of caution and have developed a large amount of respect for “old wives tales”. Those wily old women knew what they were talking about.

This is when our milking parlour was under construction. The Dutch Door is from Karen's Grandmother's (Nana's) house. For luck!

Beautiful - isn't it.

          When someone sneezes, I always say “God bless you”. I’m not a religious person! Why do I call upon God? And why is there a need to ask for divine intervention? I guess it goes back to the days when a cold could kill you. Then any kind of help would have been greatly appreciated.

          We had a bird fly into my mum’s house through an open door once. My grandmother, who was visiting, had a FIT! This bird activity is just terrible bad luck. We got the bird out fairly quickly and I never did find out the root of this superstition but if my grandmother had been Catholic, she would have been crossing herself.

          Do you know that if you give a wallet or purse as a gift you are required to place a penny in it? To bring wealth to the person you give it to.

          Dropping cutlery on the floor was filled with portends of a fair or a dark man visiting – one was a knife and one was a fork but I can’t remember which was which.

          Finding and picking up a penny was important – don’t just walk by if you see one on the ground. Of course, when you consider that in my grandmother’s time a penny could buy a couple loaves of bread, then it makes more sense.

          Cutting your fingernails (or toenails) was not allowed on Sunday. Perhaps it was considered being vain on the Sabbath but I never have figured it out.

          Deaths in the family, illness, or bad luck always happened in threes. When two people died, my gran would be on tenterhooks waiting for the next death. I can’t remember if good luck came this way, probably not.

          Crossing your fingers when you told a little white lie was supposed to negate your “sin” in telling the lie.

          Dreaming of white horses was a precursor to a death as well. Maybe they were supposed to take the spirit to heaven or the Grim Reaper rode in on one. She never explained.

          There were many superstitions around weddings too. Change your name but not the letter, change for worse instead of better. The bride needs to be wearing something borrowed, something blue, something old, and something new as she walks down the aisle. It’s bad luck if the groom sees the bride in her dress. My gran didn’t like lilies at a wedding and couldn’t tolerate the colour green for an accent. She wouldn’t have green in her house actually; it was very bad luck in her books.

          To round out the year, the first person to cross your threshold in the New Year should be a dark man – having him come into your home first would ensure plenty of good luck for your household.

          I am sure there are many more that I don’t remember. I still wonder at the origins of many of these superstitions. A little wonder in my world is a good thing (fingers crossed for luck).

Some Gelato Facts

LegatoGelato

          Smooth Taste…Island Pace

Did you know that there are Gelato Universities in Italy and the University of Guelph has offered a one-week course in making ice cream for the last 50+ years? Gelato and Ice Cream have been popular for hundreds of years but it is since the industrial revolution that refrigeration has made it accessible to the general population; the love of the cool, creamy treat has just exploded.

 

Ice Cream & Gelato are quite different. Gelato, especially our goat milk legatogelato, has much less fat. LegatoGelato has more flavour as well, it is denser and served a bit warmer than ice cream, so you have a blast of flavour in your mouth.

 

Regular ice cream, especially budget brands have cow milk cream, cow milk (usually powdered), sugar or corn syrup or straight glucose, maybe some sort of egg product, flavour (generally artificial) and binders & emulsifiers. All the ingredients are mixed up into a liquid, pasteurized and then the liquid is put into a batch freezer. The batch freezer stirs and adds air while the liquid is frozen to become ice cream. The more air that is whipped in, the more ice cream you get. So some manufacturers will make 3 cups of ice cream from one cup of their liquid base.

LEGATOGELATO is NOT whipped into a frenzy. LegatoGelato has air slowly incorporated into it but only about 30%, so for a cup of base you will get one and a third cups of legatogelato. This makes the legatogelato significantly denser. We also add lots of flavour, I mix three parts fruit mix to five parts of my base. My legatogelato base has NO artificial binders or emulsifiers. Nothing is in our legatogelato that you wouldn’t find in your own kitchen. It is REAL food made from REAL ingredients to make a wonderful, tasty REAL treat.

I take whole, pure goat milk, from my very own goats, add organic eggs from happy hens, organic cornstarch, organic sugar and some local sea salt, mix it up, cook and then pasteurize it. This is Our Base! It tastes wonderful in the liquid state. The base sits overnight and gets thicker as the organic cornstarch works its magic.

 The next day I mix in our flavours. We hand-make our fruit flavours from fresh local fruits and berries. I try to get local organic berries first and then get the local berries if there isn’t enough of the organic kind around. We clean the fruit or berries then cook up with organic sugar and organic lemon juice – that’s it! This yummy mix is frozen & used as the base is ready.

 
The combined base and fruit mix gets poured into our Gelato Batch Freezer. We have an Italian machine – a Carpiggianni. The machine mixes air into the mix slowly and freezes the mix in about 15 minutes. Then into the containers and down to the freezer.
It’s a very straightforward process.
A clean pure product made from pure foods.

Our LegatoGelato is a real food.

Breeding plans - August 2012

          It’s only August but I am planning for next years’ kidding season. Goats are pregnant for 150 days (give or take 5 days). Goats are also seasonal breeders with the majority coming into season starting in September until January. They don’t breed all year round. Therefore, a bit of planning is required.

          This year (2012) didn’t go so well. Most of the does (adult female goats) kidded at the end of February, then we had kids in March, some in April and then at the end of June. I love baby goats, I love taking care of them, and feeding them and playing with them but ½ a year is just too long.

          We hand raise all our babies. They are removed from their dams as soon as they are born, taken into our house, have their navels dipped in iodine and fed heat -treated colostrum. After their first day, the babies are raised on pasteurized goat milk (we pasteurize it ourselves) and goat kid milk replacer (a powder that we make up).

          We continue to feed the babies milk until they are about 4 months old. By this time, they are eating hay and grain and it’s not too much trouble to wean them. Each baby will drink about 2 litres a day so it’s a considerable cost to raise them. It’s one of the reasons we only raise females (doelings).

          A doeling can be bred if she is 80 lbs or more. Some doelings are this weight by the fall of their first year, some grow slower. It costs about $2.50/day to keep an adult milking doe, so it is around $800 for that first year. A doeling born in February or March has a much better chance of growing to breeding weight than one born in July.

          That is why the 2013 crop of kids will be born starting the middle of Feb and ending the end of March. The plan is for all the does to kid in a 6-week period. Gives the kids a better chance to get to a good body weight by the time Sept. rolls around. Moreover, it will concentrate the work into a shorter time span.

          Once I have target dates for kidding I can figure out when the buck(s) need to be in with the does. Which means this year breeding will begin on September 15^th and end on Halloween.

          The next decision is who to breed to whom. We purchased a baby buck from California this spring. He flew up to Vancouver when he was 15 days old and handled it all very well. My goal with buying Mousse was to increase our production level per doe. Our does are good milkers but there is definitely room for improvement.

          We want to get more milk and have fewer goats.

          Realistically we will achieve this by selective breeding and culling/selling the low producers. Production – the doe’s ability to make milk – is about 30% genetic and the rest is how the animals are raised and fed. Selecting a buck who’s mother and sisters are high producers doesn’t guarantee better milk yield. Once my boy Mousse (moose) has daughters and the daughters have started to milk, we will know if he has passed on his genetic potential.

       

Zoonosis – diseases people can get from animals.

I think most people have become far too concerned with germs. And far too concerned about the “possible” diseases they can get from an animal. There are bits and pieces of information out in the public and its lead most people to the strangest conclusions.

  Like “germs”. Most people would be hard pressed to actually give a definition of a germ. Do they mean bacteria? Viruses? Fungi? Spores? I think people would be grossed out to discover that the “culture” in yogurt and cheese are actually bacteria and fungi. Those hand cleaners that kill 99% of bacteria, those are the nice, non-toxic bacteria that wouldn’t hurt you. It is the 1% that are nasty and they just lay around, impervious to the nasty chemicals in the cleansers. The nasty chemicals are probably more of a risk to your overall general health than the bacteria. And now, those nasty bacteria have the whole environment to themselves, without any good bacteria to get in the way and prevent the wholesale spread of the baddies.

          Most animals don’t have anything that you can “catch” and get sick with. There are exceptions, of course. Pregnant women shouldn’t clean up cat poop, or garden without gloves on. Cat poop may have toxoplasmosis in it and that can hurt the unborn baby but adults can handle it. When I worked at the vet, most animals with ringworm got it from children, not the other way.

          Sick animals can make you sick. Healthy animals aren’t going to. I have lived on my farm for 17 years and don’t get sick often. When I do, it is something that is going around at my office, not from my animals.

          If you have to handle a sick animal, use your common sense. Blood, poop, and urine may be contaminated, so use gloves. When I help a goat give birth, sometimes I don’t have gloves, but I am very careful about washing thoroughly afterward. In addition, I make a point of not touch my face or eyes.

          Your skin is a strong barrier against infection of many kinds. Most disease needs to get into your body to make you ill. If you keep your hands away from your eyes, nose and mouth, then you have reduced the ways into your body. If your skin is broken, you have to be more careful. Wear gloves, wash carefully, and use your common sense.

          I am sitting at the keyboard trying to think of some illness or disease that an animal I have encountered that I could have become sick with. I did work in an animal pathology lab, where a rabies infected bear’s carcass was brought in, but it was a path lab and it was a place sick, dead animals were concentrated. Nothing comes to mind – all the pets, working at a few vet clinics, farm animals, fairs … nothing.

           I have contracted many illnesses from people, but not animals. Think about it. Breathe. Wash your hands. Humans are meant to live in the environment, not separate from it. Soil is good to touch. Animals are here to pet and hug. Enjoy life, don’t be afraid. 

And who wouldn't want to hug that!

(Archie when we first brought him home April 2012)

Why Goat Milk LegatoGelato instead of Cow Ice Cream

Shelter/Living Space:

My goats have a humane, enriched life, live in a stable herd, and have access to shelter, toys, and the outdoors 24/7. Modern dairy cows live in cement floored indoor barns, no toys, no sunshine, no grass, no soft dirt to lie on and 100+ other cows to compete with for food and water and resting stalls.

Feed Eaten:

My goats eat a barley-based food that you could eat as breakfast cereal. It is completely vegetarian, no soy or corn. They have mangers full of alfalfa hay & grass hay: free-choice minerals, grass, weeds, and branches to nibble on in their pasture. They get lots of fresh air and sunshine. They go out onto crown land to eat wild plants about twice a week. Everything they eat smells great. Dairy cows get silage, which is corn, and hay, chopped, compacted into a pit or plastic tube and allowed to ferment, like sauerkraut, but it smells terrible. They also get processed grain that is mixed and pounded so they can’t pick out the best parts; they have to eat it all.

Milk produced:

          Goat milk: Has more Calcium, more Vitamin A and less Lactose.

          My goat milk (Snapdragon Dairy) is produced in a clean environment with healthy       animals. Clean happy animals get less disease.

          My goat milk can be used raw (18 years & counting for myself).

          My goat milk has some of the best test results in BC (extremely low bacteria counts).

Cow milk:  Well it would depend on the dairy, the environment the cows live in and the husbandry of the dairy people. National pasteurization of all milk in Canada has lead to (in my opinion) a lack of cleanliness & hygiene with many dairies, mainly in the living areas of the cows, not the milking parlors. However, some leave much to be desired.

         

Gelato:

          Much less fat than ice cream

          Made from milk, not cream

          Smoother & Richer

          More fruit & flavour

          Served warmer, easier to eat

LegatoGelato:

          Made with lovely, wholesome, fresh, local goat’s milk

          Organic or Local (or both) Ingredients

          Amazing flavours

          No fillers, additives, gums, agars, gels, chemical stabilizers, or emulsifiers are used.

Nothing added that isn’t REAL FOOD. You can read and recognize every single ingredient on our label.

          Made slowly, carefully and with attention to every little step.

Why NOT LegatoGelato?

Baby goats and baby animals

When I need a break from reality and want to feel warm and fuzzy, I think about the coming bounty of baby goats (due Feb/March 2013).

              Brand new baby animals are generally extremely cute – big eyes, big ears and clumsy big feet and legs. They are so cuddly as well. Baby goats are amazing. A baby will be trying to stand within 10 minutes of being born, usually quicker. They are born hungry and try to nurse immediately – hence the standing attempts. They will find the dam’s udder by smell and will bunt/bump anything that they think might be an udder. Dairy does are generally good mothers, cleaning and talking to the babies as they are born.

              There are a couple of routes to take when you have goats and milk them. Some people leave the babies with the mothers and milk off any extra that is left over from the kids. This leads to a strong bond between the kids and dam and is hard on both of them when the kids are removed from the mum at weaning time. I have also found that the does can be reluctant to share the extra milk and have a great deal of control over who gets the milk. A doe goat must “let down” her milk when we milk her or she feeds her kids. You cannot force her to give you milk, even with a milking machine – she has to cooperate.

              Another route to raise the babies is to snatch them up as they are born, and raise them by hand (on bottles). This is what we do at our dairy. The doe does get upset and will look for the babies but as soon as she is milked, she adopts her milker as her baby. The does will clean our hair, talk to us, and fuss over us, and we become a substitute baby for her. The babies bond with people as well. They learn to trust & love people and it makes them much easier to handle their entire lives. It also makes for a goat that has more resilient to change and a goat that is easier to comfort during stressful or painful times. Remember that I raise dairy goats that will be handled and milked twice a day for their entire lives. In addition, goats have been domesticated for about 10,000 years – what is “natural” in the wilds is not what is “natural” for our goats.

              So my baby goats get lots of love and cuddles and attention. I also like naming them. I write down names all year and will have a long list to choose from when the kids are born. We do have some themes. Sapphire and her daughters and granddaughters are named after gems, jewels, and gemstones. I had been naming the bucks (boys) after breakfast cereals, just for fun. I like fun names but not too cute. Some I have been considering are candy names; Smartie, Chiclet, Lolllipop, Popcorn, Cookie, Muffin, that sort of thing. It’s lots of fun.

              From my warm fuzzy place, I now leave to head out into the dark, stormy weather to take care of my gravid girls. Ciao.

This is Archie in April 2012

Setbacks

ARRRGGHHHHH!

Friday November 9th and yet Another setback.

The pasteurizer that is needed to cook our goat milk and make our base isn’t working correctly and needs to be repaired. Therefore, it is off line for all of next week.

My goal of launching our gelato on 17 November has been dashed and I was feeling extremely disappointed and angry.

          It takes a lot of energy to do the work involved in setting up a business. More than I thought it would. Sometimes, and I know I have said this before, not knowing what the emotional and physical demands would be has been better than knowing ahead of time , or I wouldn’t have tried to have a goat milk gelato business. Naiveté comes in handy.

          Part of being in business is not giving up, and keeping control of emotions. I was spitting bullets last night and I wanted to blame just about everybody on the planet. I expressed my feeling aloud to my goats and my business partner. That was all; it ended in the milking parlor. It’s good to vent but I have to make sure it is appropriate; the right time, the right place, and the right person. Then, even though it is extremely difficult, I let the emotions go.

          I should admit that I am feeling flat today, a bit down in the mouth and sad. I won’t let these feelings stop me from getting done what needs to be done. That is what “not giving up” looks like. Continuing on as if nothing has happened, doing the work that has to be done, updating the webpage, Facebook and blog…

          Wah, wah, I’ll stop whining now and get on with the work that needs to be done. It is Friday today, and the start of a long weekend. Will have time to get my trailer cleaned, the transportation freezer installed, the inverter installed, and an inventory of our coulis. I will keep on getting all my ducks in a row so when we launch it will be as smooth as possible.

UPDATE - Tuesday Nov. 13/12.

      Being angry and frankly pissed off was motivating and we got lots done on the weekend. Still planning on getting the inverter into the trailer but it's pretty wet and raining today. 

      Feeling better and keeping up the pace. 

Above is a photo of my sweetie Primrose. She is eight and pregnant with her babies due around Valentines day. She is a great milker and her daughters are doing very well.  Thinking of naming her upcoming baby girls after chocolate bars:  Kitkat, Milky Way, Aero. Could be fun!

Baby goats make me very happy, they are so lovely and cuddly. Ahhhh - a happy place.

Are you more prepared now?

     What a mess in New Jersey/New York! It has been a couple weeks since Superstorm Sandy hit and some places are just now getting help. Many small towns have FEMA and the Red Cross showed up just recently.

      Are you prepared? Forget the 3 days food and water. I think everyone needs to be set up for at least 2 weeks.

     Look at the news! Look at the line-ups for gasoline! People waiting in line for 8 hours, cars running out of gas while waiting in line.

      Keep in perspective that everyone knew Sandy was coming and were warned that this would be the worst storm in recent history, even worse than the one last year. And it still is a complete mess.

      I have nothing but admiration and respect for all the workers and government people who are really working hard to get life back to normal. I don’t want to take anything away from their awesome effort, hard work, and dedication. They are amazing – all the volunteers and good Samaritans stepping up to help their neighbours and to help complete strangers. That is what I hope continues to happen.

      With all the help, work, and preparedness, people are still suffering. It is time to make sure you don’t end up in the same situation.

      What is stopping you? You do not have to purchase a kit – you can put together your own in a clean garbage can that has a lid – Put everything in big garbage bags – garbage bags can make good rain coverings for stuff and for yourself. Put in warm socks and clothes – polar fleece or wool & some wearable shoes (check out thrift stores). Blankets, a tent you know how to set up, some food you/your family will actually eat, medications (spares), spare glasses, first aid stuff, jugs of water, candy, chocolate, pet food, rope, extra tools you are comfortable using, a battery or wind-up radio that actually works, paper/pen/markers.

      Think about it – you need to stay warm and hydrated first. Dry and fed is nice too. Being able to start a nice tiny fire will make you feel better; you can boil water, make coffee, soup… Sleeping is good too; you won’t sleep if you are too cold. Radio will let you know what’s happening. Paper and pen – you can leave a note if you need to leave your home – make sure nobody wastes time looking for you.

There will be no warning if there is a big earthquake, we will not have time to prepare.

Please don’t wait.

You owe it to your friends and family to be prepared and to survive & not to be a burden on an overstretched system.

BTW - animals are aware and get very upset before an earthquake. I think we are okay right now.

We won't be at the Nov. 17th Farmers Market :(

Thanks to everyone for being so supportive and patient!

Circumstances beyond our control are keeping us from the Saturday, Nov 17 Comox Valley Farmers Market (9 to 12 at the Native Son's Hall, on Cliffe St. in Courtenay).

The pasteurizer at the dairy plant is undergoing upgrades and we are still waiting on a diode (whatever that is) for the 3-phase rotary inverter that runs the gelato machine. The diode is in Edmonton - so it's closer but still a couple days out.

We have our fingers crossed that we will make the Nov. 24 market, so if you could all say a little prayer and send some positive energy to that end, we would really appreciate it.

Our website will be launching soon as well. It's like everything will be ready at the same time, regardless of my idea of a time line.

Below I have attached a photo, by me - in my kitchen, of the AWESOME labels designed by Emagination Design (Sue Pyper) and printed in Courtenay by ABC Printers. We sure have great local business around here.

Thanks again for hanging in with us, your support is getting me through a pretty bumpy ride!

Comox Valley Farmer's Market November 17, 2012

We are going to be there!
Comox Valley Farmer's Market
November 17, 2012

Will have some gelato and we plan to amaze you with our flavours!

Come by, have a taste! Take some home!

Love to see everyone on location:  9 am to 12 noon.

We will be stationed outside, in front of the Native Sons Hall in Courtenay

I'm so excited!!!!!