Bodega & Yerba Santa Goat Cheese Tour
Take a virtual tour of Bodega & Yerba Santa Goat Cheese during kidding season to see Javier Salmon’s adorable goat babies and mothers up close. All photos by Denise Tarantino.
Javier Salmon of Bodega & Yerba Santa Goat Cheese raises more than 100 dairy goats on about on 20 acres of pasture in Lakeport, about 120 miles from the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Javier came to the U.S. from Peru in the mid-1980s. He and his brother, Daniel, run the family goat dairy business, learned from their father, Jaime.
The herd includes La Mancha, Nubian, Saanen, Alpine, and Toggenburg breeds, and mixes thereof.
The female goats are usually impregnated in late fall, and kidding season begins in February or March. The first year a goat gives birth she typically has one kid, and in subsequent years she typically has two or three.
About 80 babies were born this spring, adding about 30 females to their herd. The male goats were placed with a traveling herd that helps keep weeds down throughout the Bay Area.
The mix of breeds produces a diversity of colors and patterns in the herd.
Baby goats wait to be fed by their mothers.
The kids are fed by their mothers for about six weeks, until they begin to develop teeth and horns. Nursing becomes uncomfortable for the mothers, so the babies are separated, and the mothers start machine-milking.
After the nursing ends, kids that have been separated from their mothers must learn how to eat with the rest of the herd. Each kid must fend for herself.
Javier’s wife, Elodie, monitors the feeding to ensure that all the youngsters get a chance to eat. Kids that have trouble getting to the feed are pulled out to feed with a separate group.
Bono, a new guard pup, gets practice watching over the baby goats.
Care of the goats starts at 7 am. They are given fresh hay, grown on the farm, and alfalfa prior to milking. Goats are picky about their food. They will not eat the hay if it has been stepped on by other goats, so the hay is kept just outside the pasture fence.
After the morning feeding, Javier leads the herd to the milking barn.
The milking barn holds eight goats at a time. It takes two to three hours to milk the whole herd.
The goats are eager to line up at the milking stanchions because they know more food is to come.
Javier squeezes the udder to get a sample of the color and texture of the milk before attaching the goat to the milking machine.
Javier and his worker, Bernard, secure the girls for milking.
The milking begins, and the goats enjoy their breakfast. They eat a pelleted organic feed and, at the end of the milking, they are given hops soaked in whey, which is the liquid that remains after the cheesemaking process. The hops are given to the farm from a local brewery.
Early in the season, milk production is at about 25 gallons a day. Later in the year, milk production decreases, so Javier milks the entire herd by hand.
Javier uses the milk to make queso crema (fromage blanc), queso fresco (feta-style cheese), and queso cabrero (an aged, Manchego-style cheese). In the first stage of cheese making, the culture sits for 24 hours, then the curd hangs in cheesecloth to allow the whey to drain.
The feeding continues! After milking, the herd gathers outside the barn, where they enjoy a drink of whey before going back out to the pasture.
The mothers with babies under six weeks old are not milked because they are still nursing; however, they are still brought into the milking barn to feed. Establishing this morning routine helps prepare the mothers for when their babies are separated and machine-milking starts.
The herd returns to pasture.
The herd is rotated through the meadows every few days using portable fencing to ensure fresh pasture. In addition to hay that is grown on the farm, the herd eats a diverse diet of grasses and wild herbs such as mugwort and chamomile.
A four-week-old baby hurries to catch up with her mother in the herd.
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