Weekend Recap- Raw Chevre and Animals in the Applegate

wow, i guess it's been a little bit since i've posted on here...my days home have been so full of good times i've hardly sat down at the computer. so here i am writing at the office :)

last week, jordan and i ventured into cheesemaking, and made our own totally raw chevre! a whole half-gallon made two little pints, heehee! but, now we have tons of whey stored in the freezer to use for fermenting things! that should be fun to figure out!

we bought a goat-cheese-making kit that came with recipes, but all of them instructed us to "sanitize" the milk to by boiling it, then cooling it to make the cheese...jordan ended up finding a good, simple recipe online for "totally raw goat cheese"...i'll have to find the information at home and post it if anyone is interested.

we basically added the culture and rennet to milk and let it sit on the counter for at least 24 hours, then drained it through butter cloth (or multiple layers of cheesecloth) for another 24 hours at least. i think we let ours drain for more like 48 hours, and have really crumbly dry cheese, which makes it really easy to crumble it for salads :)

in one pint jar, we added lavender and rosemary, in the other went rosemary and chives, all from our front garden :) so anyway, this weekend, we finally got around to buying some greens to try our own lavender rosemary chevre out on a salad.

mmmm, so good with walnuts, olive oil, and balsamic :)

on saturday, we managed to squeeze in our first weekend escape-this was the first time i left the ashland area since we moved here! (not counting jordan's graduation and our trip to hawaii, which happened about 2 weeks after our move...and jordan had the priviledge of an overnight trip to portland to meet the chiropractic board)... but this was our first weekend outing in our new homebase! :)

we drove about an hour northwest of ashland to the beautiful little applegate valley, where the majority of the farms we see at the farmers' market come from.
destination #1: cowhorn winery-southern oregon's only biodynamic winery and farm, which goes way beyond the label of organic-the owners' do all they can to make the place a "closed ecosystem" by using everything they can from the location (i.e. using the rocks they pick to line a pond and make raised beds), and put as much back into it as they can as well (i.e. lots of composting). i didn't take any photos there, unfortunately, but it's pretty early in the season, so there really isn't much to see, mostly dirt, rocks, and bare grape vines :)

destination #2: sanctuary one- a little farm that houses rescued domestic and farm animals. elle has been absolutely LOVING animals, to the point of screeching when she sees a dog walking down the street! so, we found out about this farm and thought it would be a fun way for elle to meet all kinds of animals.

waiting in line for dinner! :)

we all had a fun time meeting cats, goats, horses, ducks, geese and even a pot-bellied pig! lots of fun photo ops there :)

in the "cat house" :)