Happy Bday, Prepperfan
Muffy…congrats on your Excalibur!!! Our box style has had so much use for all sorts of things. It was from the 1980’s and still basically works. Sits on our coffee table…for lack of any where better. but I put plants on top of it. Aloe, for one. Stay safe if the lights go out with the weather. Got your flashlights handy? Worse come to worse: leave a small flashlite on all nite for a nite light. Safety well worth the batteries.
AmyD…yes, I put the mesh across the bowl and the elastic edges kept it tight. Like long ago plastic to put over bowls for picnics, etc. Then I milked thru. I have the dwarf Nigerians so I can’t use something taller than a SS bowl. Tho I always wash the udder/teats, hair can still drop. This way it never dropped into the milk. I’d aim the squirted milk to a different area of the netting to avoid splashing thru the hair. Goat milking has to be super clean. I always used a pie plate for the first few squirts. 1) to check for mastitis [never had any lumps and had the test papers to check further if I’d spotted any] … 2) to clear the ‘tubes’ of any bacteria up there as they lay in …whatever. I’d dump the pie plate and begin milking into the bowl. Get immediately into qt canning jars stored in fridge. It goes thru a funnel that has a disposable milking filter. Then it’s clean in the fridge and never had ‘goat-y’ tasting milk.
Should I mention how long it took me to finally just tie that dratted [and beloved — they’re ALL hooligans!] goat’s left foot to the milking stand? A goat foot into the bowl means the whole thing is wasted…unless you have pigs/chickens. She and I learned how to milk together and we had many a rodeo while we both learned. Took me a full two months …due to the miscoordination of my disability. And developing the strength. I don’t think I ever labored so hard to learn a new skill. But ….my mom read me the Heidi story too many times when I was a kid. I WANTED very badly to learn to milk. Did that!!! So IF you resort to tying a foot during milking, DO NOT FORGET TO UNTIE…BEFORE you let her head out of the stanchion. Alllllllll kinds of drama for a few seconds when that happens. I rigged a quick release…JIC!!! Still… fond memories! Someday I hope to do that again!
Today, did research on growing food if we would have a solar minimum. The affects on large agriculture. History of what folks did during those time periods. It was pretty ugly. Modern times there are some adaptions but…..population density might cancel out any advantage.
Had weather-related chores today. Not too bad.
OldMtWoman …G’nite all