Maids A-Milking

Today I learned to milk a goat. When Bev asked if I had milked a goat before, I replied, “I’ve never milked anything in my life.” She laughed and sat me next to Yummy who was standing on the milking bench, munching away and waiting impatiently for me to get started.

I reached this climactic insight into cheese making in pursuit of a sliver of cheese Johnny secreted to me during a wine and cheese pairing prep at Tolosa Winery. This particular cheese, Templeton Gap, is a washed-rind soft goat cheese and pairs especially well with Tolosa’s 1772 Pinot Noir. I immediately became enthralled with Templeton Gap: its billowy rind, discolored creamy inner layer, and bright white interior – Johnny explained to me that soft cheeses will ferment from the outside in, and hard from the inside out.

If it was from Templeton, I didn’t have more than a thirty-minute drive to find the source. I realize any normal person would enjoy this cheese with crackers, perhaps buy the cheese if they saw it at the supermarket, and leave it at that. However, I wanted to know how a small creamery produced a cheese like this and what were the animals like? What was the property like? Johnny put me in touch with Bev Michels, owner of Alcea Rosea Farm (producer of Templeton Gap) and coincidental wine club member at Tolosa Winery. She told me to just head on out the next day and be prepared for hot weather.

Indeed, it was 71° in San Luis Obispo and when I was greeted by two ranch dogs upon opening my car door in Templeton the blast of hot air was 97°. Bev came out of her ranch-style home to greet me, an older woman in her sixties with cropped white hair and of medium build in a simple peach-colored dress and thong sandals. She walked me over to the goats’ pasture where the curious ones starting bleating and climbing up on the gate to get a closer look at me. On the other end of the pasture I could see goats climbing on an abandoned wooden play structure, while behind me was a vegetable garden, a neat red hen house, and a small orchard interspersed with a row of grapes being trained up. Three pigs and three piglets were on the other side of the orchard with their own matching red pig-shelter and a sign, les cuchon. Beyond were rolling hills that had turned brown with the heat and dotted with hardy oaks – a typical north San Luis Obispo County landscape, one that always reminded me of Murphys in Bear Valley or a frontier town where you can ride your horse onto Main Street to pick up groceries.

Bev pointed out a few goats of about ten and explained that every year the baby goats–kids–that were registered had to have names that started with the same letter. The kids she was keeping this year started with “F” and were named Fig, Flour, and Fennel. She had me follow her past her milking station, don some booties and enter the creamery. Some cheese was hanging over a trough, and I learned that the “curds” were what stayed behind in the cheese cloth while the “whey” was the liquid protein which drained into a bucket placed under the trough. Bev said she had no use for the whey and used to dump in out in the fields, but it attracted flies and smelled foul. After a little thought, she began feeding it to the pigs who lapped it up like sugar candy and became so tasty themselves as a result, that she had a waitlist for her pigs come harvest time.

Curds and Whey.

Bev walked me through to her study where she had two cold rooms for aging. In one she had several racks of a red-waxed goat cheese, an experimental beer-washed goat cheese, and lo-and-behold… Templeton Gap! When she opened the second cold room door, instead of cheese there were racks of wine, “My husband re-purposed this one,” Bev chuckled and shook her head.

I followed Bev back outside and we stood in front of the pig enclosure. She turned on a hose and the pigs came running out to get sprayed down and wallow in the mud. Three adult pigs, and in a neighboring enclosure, three baby pigs sat under a grove of sunflowers. 

Milking Station.

Back in front of the goat pasture, Bev told me to let one out so we could start milking. I looked around for a halter to lead a goat ten feet to the milking bench, but I quickly found out the goats know the order in which they are milked and once let out of the gate, will run over to the milking bench, hop up on it, and wait to be fed. The metal bench itself was about two feet off the ground and in the shape of an “L.” On the long side, a trough at goat-head height kept the goat standing there busy, while the person milking sat on the short side opposite the goat. Yummy (of the “Y” kid year) was the first out the gate, and after settling into the food at the bench, Bev washed her udder and showed me how to squeeze the milk from her teats into a metal pail. Of course she made it look so easy and quick. “Five minutes per goat, and each produces about a gallon per day,” Bev explained, “I milk twice per day, and ideally you would want to milk twelve hours apart, but I milk at 6am and 4pm so I can eat dinner like a normal person at a reasonable hour.” She moved aside and I sat down in her place. It took me several tries to get any milk to splash into the bucket, but with a little practice I slowly managed to milk the goat at about one-hundredth the speed. I milked a goat today!

Mission Accomplished!