milk AND CHeese
On this day we hope to share what milk and cheese production
look like. We will take your child through an entire scope of different management styles and types of dairies around the world.
We start the days journey with feed measuring and weighing to ensure the animals daily nutrient requirements are met, and explain and explore why they need certain nutrients and minerals and how what a goat eats can end up in our milk and cheese! (This is full of math skills for older kids and pouring, measuring and textile activities for the littles)
Fun Activity: We will of course have the children help serve breakfast to the working goat girls! As we serve them breakfast, we will go over how to daily check their health, water sources and general behavior.
After the girls have been fed we head into out small commercial creamery to let the kids see how the milking machines work and how most dairies operate in the USA, they will each learn how to properly clean and prepare our girls for milking and how to collect the milk themselves!!! While commercial dairies are important to our food system its only a piece of the picture, and as we want to help children learn about producing their own food one day, we will show your children learn how homes and families collect, clean, and safely store their milk.
Fun Activity: New generations are the lifeblood of farms and families, and after milking momma's we will bottle feed babies, baby health is linked to the future of our herd and very important.
Once everyone is fed and milked we will travel to the Cheese Make Room, where children will each have a station to use the milk they collected to make some simple cheeses to take home. As we use our hands to make cheeses we will learn about the chemistry behind cheese making, the nutrition in milk, and the many different types of cheese that are created. We will even explore USA methods v.s foreign and homesteaders methods.
This day is one of our favorites and very close to my heart, the day is so full of new things to learn that it speeds by and will leave everyone on the edge of their seats for the next day!
Additional Investigations into Probiotics:
Bake sourdough bread and discover yeasts.
Cooking: Make a batch of ricotta cheese and make butter!