Homemade Butter

by: Chelsa
Living on our farm has a lot of nice perks; like organically grown fruits and veggies and herbs, pasture-raised meat and eggs, and plenty of fresh goat milk from our two milk goats, Milkshake and Cinnamon. I am very happy with the quality and quantity of our milk.  With two goats, I can make all the fresh raw yogurt, smoothies, ice cream, cream cheese, and now Mozzarella Cheese I want. I was told that the only drawback to using goat milk is that you can't make butter unless you buy a $400 machine to remove the cream from the milk.

You'd think we would have gotten a milk cow instead, since we love butter so much, but early on we decided against it. One of the main reasons we chose goats over a cow was the size factor. Samantha was 6 yrs old at the time and she was the one who wanted to milk. Goats seemed much safer than a huge cow, plus it was a lot cheaper to feed a couple of goats. Not to mention the fact that we didn't have a clue on how to raise animals. We figured smaller was safer. So I was resigned to the fact that we would just have to buy butter at the grocery store.

However, after our experience with making cheese the other day, I started thinking about the butter idea again. And I've noticed that the cream does separate some from the milk after 3-4 days in the fridge. It rises to the top and sticks to the side of the glass jars we store it in.  So yesterday I decided to scrape the cream out of all the jars we had that were at least 3 days old or older.  I put all that cream in a clean quart size glass jar, screwed the lid on tight and started shaking. We took turns shaking the cream until it began to form a big blob. Then we spooned it out into a bowl, sprinkled some sea salt in it and stirred well. Samantha thought we should find a pretty mold to put our soft butter in, so we scrounged around and found foil cupcake papers. We spread it into 3 of those put them on a plate and placed it in the fridge. It turned out better than I thought. The butter is almost white, since we don't have any green grass for the goats to eat, but it was absolutely delicious! We've been milking goats for 3 years now and you would think I would have figured this out before now. I guess it's butter late than never!

We couldn't get the camera out fast enough! It's SO GOOD!