Within the roughly 4 mile2 area I consider the Gulch proper, we have some new neighbors. I’m not going to get into their particulars because I don’t think they’d like that but they have two unique features about them: Their living arrangement is … rustic in the extreme – I genuinely don’t know how they plan to cope with winter – and they raise goats. Quite a few goats, in fact, and they seem to subsist largely on goat meat and milk. To the extent that, when I went to visit, this was their guest gift:
I’ve never gone out of my way to encounter goat milk, not being much a milk drinker. I found this a little thick, a little strong-tasting but not unpleasant. But it would take me longer to drink a quart of it than it’s likely to last in my cooler so I did the only other thing with it I could think of. I made pancakes.
And since my recipe is adapted to a much more watery substrate using milk powder, these came out kind of weird. The batter was way too thick, for one thing. But they weren’t bad. Not outstandingly better than usual, either, to be honest. I may have to beg off next time, when I return the jar.
The milk is one of the few things I miss about having goats. I used it in my coffee. One of our toy poodles loved my coffee! When we got rid of the goats and I switched to store milk, she wouldn’t drink the coffee anymore. Fun memories.
When in doubt, make pancakes… đź‘Ť
Goat’s milk is “real food”. My theory is that the less “processing” (be it chemical or physical) that happens to my food, the better it is for me. YMMV
I read a book named GOAT WALKING – A GUIDE TO WILDLAND LIVING by Jim Corbett, who claimed roaming the desert scrub with a small herd of goats really helped live him off the land. Some called the practice Pastoral Nomadism. Maybe your neighbors are of this tribe :^).
If you have any left you might try making cheese or butter out of it. I’ve never done either, but if you’re going to experiment, free feedstock is the stuff to use!