This goat’s milk is not b-a-a-a-d

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June 30, 2017 - 12:00 AM

HUMBOLDT — At first blush, Amanda Stalder, 15, appears like any other teenage girl.
She is effervescent, smiles easily and is comfortable in most any setting, including her rural home south of Humboldt.
But ask a question, and Amanda, as opposed to many monosyllabic teens, answers in complex sentences, occasionally taking thoughtful pause and inserting more facts, some learned on her own, others from her close-knit family.
The Stalders moved to their farmstead five years ago from Pueblo, Colo., to accommodate father Gary’s job as assistant manager at Monarch Cement Co. They still own a log cabin home at Pueblo and never pass an opportunity to return for a week or two.
The family is self-sufficient. “We’re a hunting family,” Amanda said. “We seldom buy beef,” rather opt to dine on venison.
Her mother, Jennifer, finds kitchen duties a daily experience, and does other chores associated in modern minds with another era, such as making bar soap from goat’s milk or turning meat from a hog purchased at the fair into sausage.
Like her mother, Amanda delights in habits of yesteryear. For her, it’s taking care of goats. In a small milk shed, Amanda milks her goats by hand twice a day. She has a milking machine, “but I’m faster by hand.”
On a recent evening, Amanda headed for the shed, toting two buckets. One contained tasty pellets; the other a small stainless steel milk pail.
The herd of about a dozen — a mix of Lamanchas and Nigerian Dwarfs — congregates, each positioning itself among a crowd of exotic chickens, feathers everywhere. When it comes to food, no one is picky.
The charge of hungry creatures topples the feed bucket, spilling the pellets, at which Amanda issues a mild oath. Amanda fetches another portion of feed and begins her milking chores.
She quickly falls into a relaxed rhythm.
Minutes later: “Done already?” she asks her friend. And proceeds to the next who is placated by a scratch behind the ear.
 
 THOUGH the raw milk is for sale, Amanda’s goat herd as an enterprise isn’t lucrative at this point. Most is consumed by the family.
As mentioned, her mother makes soap from the milk.
The process also involves lard, some oils — Amanda rattled off a few but didn’t mention specifics — and something to give a pleasant scent to the finished product, a hard soap reminiscent of what would have been found in a homesteader’s dugout on the prairie.
“Mom sells some at farmers markets,” Amanda said. She tried Iola’s a couple of times but deferred when “the entry fee was more than she sold.”
When milk production swamps soapmaking, what’s left over usually is frozen for later use, though some goes on cereal or for concocting gravies or sauces.
Goat milk also is made into cheese, a process the Stalders have yet to tackle.
If Amanda decides school work, a vacation or favorite pursuits intervene and make daily milking too much of a task, she just says “sayonara.” That may lead to a little discomfort for the does, but it doesn’t last long. They absorb stored milk, giving them a nutritional supplement to feed and forage, Amanda said.
Amanda also has a couple of kids (young goats) that she feeds with milk from bottles.
 
AMANDA, a sophomore at Chanute High School, is active on the school’s volleyball team as well as track. A highlight last season was qualifying for state on the 4×100 relay team.
Her future beyond high school is wide open, she said, but may include following her older sister, Maddy, a sophomore at the University of Colorado.

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