Jun

7

This morning for the first time drank fresh, raw, warm goat's milk.

We live in an area of small ranches, where the caretaker for the neighbor across the street keeps a small herd of goats — including milkers. A visiting relative from Moscow was fascinated — as Russian belief is that goat's milk is "verry good for you".

We fed the goats recently. One is a large black one-horned goat that Inessa named "Old Woman", because she looks haggard, has a droopy udder, and when we feed she butts the others away and gets most of the carrots — once butting so hard she sent a juvenile tumbling head over tail.

Old Woman is big and tough but not brilliant. When you try to feed other goats she quickly knocks them away: goats have horizontal pupils to increase their lateral depth of field, so they can watch for predators as well as competitors for food. Eventually I out-smarted her, and learned to hold onto a carrot through the fence and make her chew it– distracting her while Inessa fed the more demure ladies.

This morning on my run I asked the care-taker, Victor, if we could have some goat milk. He milks daily — drinking some himself and sharing with his constant companion mutt Zapato. He happily obliged and we finally got something back from Old Woman. He knelt next to her and pinned her hind leg in the crook of his bent knee. He slapped her udder several times to bring down the milk– mimicking what the kids do before nursing. In about 7 minutes he milked about 1.5 quarts into my plastic container, and I jogged the warm foamy jug up to the house.

They recommend goat's milk be pasteurized but Inessa insisted it be drunk raw. So we filtered it through gauze and gave it a try. Mild milk - very good, actually. A little sweeter and richer than non-fat cow's milk I'm used to.

Driving to work I noticed the udder drivers along side me. How funny they were with their shiny embellished vehicles and coiffed hair, determined and headed toward important appointments of a higher nature– while I rode contentedly digesting the friendly secretions of another animal.


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