Yowch!

Picture 1 : This is not Vermont.  It's France.  But I love this picture, and I didn't feel like going downstairs to get my camera to upload the lovely photographs of my damaged digits.  So here are some sunflowers.

Remember how I mentioned my haying blisters and hay chafe?  Well, today in the cheese house we salted the camembrie.  So my hands were covered in salt.  It was a really terrific experience, overall.  But actually, the camembrie is my favorite cheese to make.  The curds are really fun to pour and when you are salting the cheese it's all round and cute and feels like some sort of strange sea creature...in a good way.  

I feel like a gymnast again!  My hands are all blistered and my biceps are nice and sore.  

I worked in the cheese house from 8-12, salting and then wrapping and pricing for the market tomorrow.  I ate lunch and then made some vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies.  They're pretty good...but I am not going to put the recipe up, because I don't remember it.  I kinda just made it up.  I really must start measuring when I bake.  I don't have dry measuring cups with me, so I keep eyeballing everything/substituting/making things up.  That's fine for cooking, but with baking it's a bit more dangerous.  After my cookie adventure, I had afternoon chores.  A week-ish ago a big tub came in the mail, containing these crazy contraptions that measure how much milk each girl is producing.  It helps you figure out if your goats are "earning their keep."  We used them tonight, so after each goat was done milking, we took a milk sample and recorded how much milk they had produced.  We have to do it tomorrow morning as well. 

My favorite part of the day?  When Hannah chased the goats up into the parlor yelling, "THIS IS NOT A PETTING ZOO!!!"

After chores, Tucker told me what he was doing during chores...half the baby goats got out of their pasture and he had to get them back in the new barn.  He got them in the barn, but not inside the fence.  So we spent about 15 minutes fighting with these little kids, shoving them through a door without letting any of the other ones out.  I would compare the experience to wrestling with an octopus.  Not that I've ever wrestled an octopus, but imagine it would be similar.  Then one of the milkers, Ember, got in with the non-milkers, and we spent about 20 more minutes trying to catch her and put her in the correct pasture.  GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!  JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH!  CRAZY TOWN!

Then I made dinner...I had broiled zucchini and potatoes with some LaLuna on top and some sauteed spinach and kale.  Just lots of vegetables today.  I actually don't think I had any protein today...hmm.  I'll have to have lots of beans or lentils tomorrow.  Tomorrow is farmer's market day!  WOOOOO.