Black Mesa Ranch
Snowflake, Arizona, USA
Artisan Cheese
Nubian Goats
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Updated!
6/07: We have revamped our Ranch Workshop Packages!
In addition to our one and three-day cheese making and goat management workshops learn about our free open- house days and lodging accommodations.
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Award Winning Artisan Goat Cheeses
4 Awards 2005 ADGA National Competition
3 Awards 2004 ADGA National Competition
2 Awards 2005 ADGA National Competition
2 Awards 2004 ADGA National Competition
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Click here to read the online version of Kathryn's booklet
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This site last updated:
March 29, 2008
© 2000-2008 Black Mesa Ranch Inc. All Rights Reserved
Arizona Grown!
2/1/01
We decided to go to Showlow (actually Lakeside) to get the generator looked at. The "authorized repair shop" was the back part of a mobile home in a trailer park with a mechanic who was 199 years old. He thought it might be a capacitor and called some neighbors over to help move our generator around and take it apart. He didn't know how to use his multi-meter and Scotty, the neighbor who did know wasn't home so they just went ahead and replaced the capacitor. By the time it was put back together again Scotty was back and he was able to come over and used the meter to check the electric output which seemed OK. The repair was under warrantee so we didn't pay anything (except we bought a couple of filters from him too). Regardless, if it works OK it will have been worth it. We didn’t dare dream it could be fixed while we waited.
We took it home after some other run-around and it seemed to be fine. Got the water tank filled and the batteries charged and all seems back to normal.
2/2/01
Replacement hydraulic hose for the tractor arrived today.
2/5/01
A beautiful morning so we jumped up and set right in on painting the Goat House and the Chicken-Rabbit house. We went ahead and got out the airless sprayer for the job and it made it really easy. Like K always says it takes longer to set-up and later clean that machine than it takes to paint a big project with it. Anyway we painted out 5 gallons of a nice dark green paint K had gotten at HD on her last trek to Flagstaff and it was almost enough. I ran out of paint with about ½ of one side of the chicken coop still to go. We thought we might be a bit shy so we made sure to do the side we see least the last so now the whole animal compound looks so much better!
2/6/01
Very windy today but we had to work for a while on the goat fencing. YUCK. I feel like I’ve been sand-blasted.
2/7/01
Amazingly windy today. Thought we were going to get blown away at times. We decided not to work outside so we went to the Barn to do the hydraulic hose repair on the backhoe on the tractor. I had tried to do the repair a couple of days ago myself but it was impossible for one person to do. With K’s help we were able to disassemble the valve assembly, remove the broken hose, thread through the new hose (don’t want to mess that part up or it would have been hell trying to get it through) and put it all back together in a bit over an hour. Darned good teamwork.
2/8/01
We got 3” of snow overnight and the place looked beautiful this morning.
D’s birthday today! Got fantastic snow squalls rolling across the valley all day but not more than an inch or so accumulation.
2/9/01
We went to town today and picked up the U-Haul trailer in anticipation of going up to Flagstaff this weekend to buy the goats.
2/10/01 We Have Goats!
We got up at 4:30 AM this morning to head off to the big city of Flagstaff with our little U-Haul trailer. We brought Bosco with us and he slept most of the 2:15 hour uneventful ride.
Our first stop was at the house of the lady (Claudia) with the goats we were interested in. We got there right on time and she welcomed us into their small house, then we headed out to meet the girls and to ask a lot of questions. The set-up there was dense with animals 14 goats, some rabbits, a bunch of chickens, 4 dogs, a horse, a small cow, some guinea and pea fowl, and who knows what else. This was not a huge place, probably a couple of acres in a suburb-type setting.
Trudy and Angel are both pregnant and seem nice enough. Trudy was standoff-ish to us and Angel was very skitterish but they seemed healthy and fine and we agreed to buy them. Trudy for $100 and Angel for $75. (We think this is a very good deal. $150-$200 a doe is normal.) Claudia milked the one goat she has that is not dried-off and let us take a couple of turns at it too. She then gave Trudy a Clostridium shot and gave both girls a vitamin B shot. Afterwards she took us in and gave us some goat milk and a sample of her soft cheese. Very Good. We left the goats with her and went off to do some other things.
We did a bunch of run-around making major purchasing stops at Home Depot and Sam’s Club as well as going to John Deere to return the warranted hydraulic hose and had a fast food lunch.
We then went back to Claudia’s to pick up the goats. She had all their paperwork ready to go, we paid her, loaded the goats and were off in no time. Made good time getting most of the way home but had too take it really slow on the 6+ miles of rough dirt road out of consideration for the goats in the trailer.
They seemed happy to get out of the trailer and looked pleased with their new digs. We noticed that Trudy was not putting much weight on her right front foot but after checking it and finding nothing obvious we figured she probably got a bit of a sprain from the ride. She walks fine with no limp but stands with the weight off it.
They are really a hoot with much more personality then we could have imagined, kind of like big thick dogs. They are obviously intelligent in their own way and curious as all get-out. Trudy has Bosco cowed (can one really say that about a goat??) already and is just waiting to get to work on the other 3 dogs.
2/11/01
The phone rang at 3AM. It was the post office in Phoenix telling us our chicks were there. I'm not sure exactly what we were supposed to do about it but apparently they had to call because it was past the 24-hour delivery window or something. K asked them if they would still be arriving here Monday AM. The person gave her a long description of the transportation options for them ("well they missed the p-123 heading up that way by a few minutes but if the AR-90 arrives on time we could do a 78-14A transfer and go the 456 route" or something like that). She again asked if they would be here Monday morning. The guy said "No, they'll be there in a few hours". K asked if there was anyway we could pick them up at our PO before Monday AM. He said "No-way. But you could come down to Phoenix right now and get them". Yeah. Right. Sure. At the end of the conversation he added "Well I just thought I should call because some of them haven't made it."
We're not too worried about the losses en route because the chicken company regularly throws in extras to cover problems during shipping but we're still trying to figure out how the PO guy knew "some hadn't made it". Does he know what 50 chicks sound like and it sounded light? Did he illegally open our mail? Did he run over the box with a forklift and was just guessing?? We'll find out tomorrow I suppose.
The goats are still happy. It is very windy today and we're not working, though there are a ton of things to do but we keep going out periodically to socialize with them. We brought them the apple cores from our breakfast this morning but they were not even slightly interested. Shows how much we know about goats I guess. Trudy is very pregnant. Though not due for about a month she is sticking WAY out. Last year she had triplets (she's about 3 years old). Angel is also supposed to be pregers but doesn't look it. She may be due in June or may not have "taken" at all. She is Trudy's daughter and will be just one year old herself in June!
2/12/01 We Have Chicks!
Got a call early from the PO that our chicks had arrived! K & Bosco took off to get them while I made final adjustments to their temporary new home in the guestroom. By the time K was back with them the heat lamp was all adjusted and warm and they were all set with starter food. A special additive we had purchased for their water was included in the box which we mixed up with some sugar water and put in the enclosure for them. 4 chicks were DOA and 2 more were too damaged to save but by-and-large they seemed in good pretty shape.
We had a really good time watching and playing with the little fur balls.
2/13/01
A nice day today with temps over 50 degrees.
Today we worked most of the morning on burying 24” chicken wire in the ground around the perimeter of the goat enclosure to prevent coyotes from digging under. We fastened it every couple of feet with hog rings and then set it at 8” to 12” deep and angled out from the main fence. Much of the digging we could do with the backhoe but some had to be hand dug.
The goats are great. We spent a little time with them today and did some more work on their "habitat". They really have personalities. At one point today we and the 4 dogs and the 2 goats were all just hanging out in their house. The goats were laying down, napping or chewing their cuds, the dogs were all napping and K and I almost fell asleep too. It was windy again this afternoon and their house is real sheltered and warm and smells just great with the hay and oats etc.
They LOVE their "4-way" mix, a grain mix they normally get when milking. We are using some now as a training incentive in preparation for milking. Trudy is great on the milking stand and is an old hand at it but it is brand new to Angel. Angel is catching on quickly and has already progressed markedly in just 2 days to being handled on the stand.
It got really windy with snow and rain showers so we quit for the day early.
On a sad note one of the chicks is almost dead. Don’t know what’s wrong with it, we found it just before going to bed just laying on it’s side, hardly breathing. The others were picking at it. We put a little dish of water next to it and covered it with a small box near the heat lamp.
2/14/01
Snow flurries overnight with just a trace on the ground this morning.
An overnight miracle! I went to remove the dead chick this morning but when I lifted up the box it flew out of there so fast and scooted into the crowd of others so quickly that I barely saw it. I couldn’t even be sure which one it was anymore. They all look healthy and fine and the same. K says I made it up to spare her feelings and got rid of the dead chick without her seeing.
It was a grey and cold morning so we decided to make a big trip into Showlow today and get some things crossed of our list. We headed in pretty early after feeding all the beasts and got a bunch done including getting the frame of my Lazy-boy chair repaired, picking up 55 gallons of diesel for the tractor, buying a nice 6.5HP rototiller for our many upcoming major gardening and landscaping projects, having a decent lunch at a Chinese buffet and hitting a music store for some guitar stuff. It snowed most of the time we were in town and they were starting to get a pretty good accumulation by the time we left but we got just a dusting or sprinkle at the ranch, no more.
2/15/01
Mid-month duties today included filling the water tank (it was down about 2/3 plus 20”) which took the pump just about 2 ½ hours, checking the LPG (@68%), and checking the water softener salt (OK).
We also got some good work done on burying more chicken wire around the goat enclosure. Used the new rototiller to soften a section for digging where we couldn’t get the tractor in. It worked great!
2/16/01
Nice working weather. So nice we ended up working a really long day, quitting about 7 PM. With the days getting longer it’s going to be hard quitting at a decent hour.
K did a bunch of tractor work searching for a waterline somewhere in the area of the animal compound. She had made some cross trenches 3’ deep in several logical places for the previous occupants to have run the lines. We know there was water down there somewhere because there is a hose bib another 100’ further down toward the valley. It MUST come from near the north house. Doesn’t it? Anyway she had done a good deal of serious trenching without finding anything so today she started punching holes in the ground starting at the hose bib, trying to follow the line where it took her. It turned out that they had run the line a lot further to the North than we had suspected, on the other side of the cross fence for this section of the property. After much work she had located a good place to tap in for our new water hydrant near the chicken/rabbit house.
My projects today included building a milk stand for the goats, mounting a mineral salt and baking soda lick container, adding some traction strips on the Goat House ramps and repairing the Milkroom door on the Goat House.
2/17/01
A very nice day with the temp reaching just short of 60 even though it was a bit overcast.
Today we continued work on getting water to the animal compound area. The first thing was to make sure that there was water to the line. All of the valves at the Valve house at the well are turned off except the one for the South house and we have the pump-pressurized line coming out of the South house turned off so it doesn’t flood the North house where the plumbing is totally trashed so we were not surprised that there was no water in the line K found. First thing we did to find the water source was test the pressurized line valve at the South House and SURPRISE! It worked! Of course we also ended up running a bunch of water into the North House.
We turned off the valve again and next made repair at the north house, basically just capping off the water pipe where it entered the house.
K then backhoed a trench from where she had found the water line yesterday to the corner of the chicken coop, then went off to fill-in all the test holes she had dug. She also did a really nice job leveling a section of ground near the North house that was very trashy.
I did the plumbing work and installed the water hydrant at a corner of the Chicken-Rabbit enclosure then we worked on filling the plumbing trench in together.
We ran into a problem when I went to turn on the valve to the new hydrant. I noticed that the water was running through the system even though the hydrant was off. This could only mean a fairly major leak some where on the line. I shut it off and went searching for a big wet spot somewhere along where we think the line runs and found one pretty quickly. Directly behind the North house we had begun a trench months ago looking for the water line there. I guess we had found it with the backhoe without knowing it because the hole was now full of water. A good project for tomorrow!
K also got the last of the coyote-proofing chicken wire buried around the perimeter of the goat habitat and I did some tractor work behind the Chicken house re-grading the area.
2/18/01
Went to fill the well to make up for losing the bunch of water with the leak behind the North house but the generator wouldn't work. The engine started and ran just fine but it didn't put out any power. Great. More generator problems and we're already low on water. It's Sunday and nothing we can do about it today.
Wrote in journal a lot.
K dug trenches for water to goat house and electric to goat house.
I did a bunch of cleaning up and raking, got water to coop working.
2/21/01
Worked in the old orchard clearing out the dead trees, carting off junk and rototilling the land to cut some of the weeds growth. It was a big project but the place already looks better and is close to ready for some spring plantings.
2/25/01
Not much to report today due to the weather which was chilly and windy with a "wintery mix" storm coming in tonight. The new chicks have grown a lot in the last few days. Goat Trudy looks big enough to be carrying triplets (we can only keep hoping!). We began investigating various wind generators to augment our PV solar electric set-up. We've decided not to pursue getting the goats that companion wild burro from BLM until after they have kidded...too risky. Today we worked on getting our RV cleaned and ready to sell in the near future.
2/26/01:
Got some rain and a little snow overnight but not much. Pretty cool, cloudy and windy today.
K headed off to town to do some shopping (hardware and grocery mostly), I built the concrete block base pad at the Powerhouse for our new LPG back-up generator which should arrive any day now. Still running the little generator more than I'd like just to keep the batteries from running down too low and we remain on critical water and electric usage rules.
The cheese-making supplies I ordered arrived today. Now all I need is some cooperation from the goats! In good time I suppose I'll have more milk than I know what to do with.
Made some calls to set up a sale or consignment of our little RV. Looks like we'll need to take it at least to Flagstaff to get a decent price.
We took a nice walk on the property with all the dogs. Found some nice old Indian pottery shards in an area that looked like it was used for stone tool making.
2/27/01:
Nice weather though overcast and cool. Almost no precipitation and no wind until late in the day.
A very productive day. After a long walk around most of the perimeter of the property we headed over to the animal compound to do some work. We finished the kidding stall for the goats and installed a LP gas heater for use if it gets too cold for them. While we're expecting Trudy to kid in 2 weeks she could be as early as this weekend.
K installed the last of the windows in the Chicken/Rabbit house and worked with the tractor on burying the last of the perimeter wire fence around it to deter coyotes etc. She also attached the wire mesh to the partition between the rabbit and chicken sides and re-built the chicken nesting boxes, readying them for installation.
I welded more of the metal framework for the chicken yard enclosure. Just a few more pieces to go and we will be able to put up the wire.
The UPS guy delivered a big box full of goat and milking supplies and another with our new manual grain grinder. We will be using the grinder to make supplemental feed for the goats from some of the nearly 2000 lbs of wheat, beans etc that had been left here by the previous owners over 10 years ago.
2/28/01:
We had a message on the machine when we got up this morning (don't know how we could have missed the call) that the driver for the delivery company for the big generator had not been able to find us yesterday (Wednesday) so he'd gone back to the depot (in Phoenix)! I called the company (after having to track them down 'cause they didn't leave a number) and after giving them a piece of my mind, gave them directions. The dispatcher got all worried about the driver having to go down a dirt road! Now we have to meet him in town tomorrow morning (hopefully) to have it (500+ lbs) transferred to our truck. Prima Dona truck drivers if you can even believe it!
Since we knew that it definitely was NOT showing up today we headed off to Cottonwood AZ, about 250 miles away, near Sedona with our RV to put it up for sale. The trip was about 4 hours each way, the bulk of it through a pretty good snow storm from Flagstaff on, so we were gone most of the day. We ended up putting it up on consignment at a place there. Hopefully it will sell in the next month or two.
We stopped in Holbrook on the way out and back to razz the guy who has our other generator about getting it finished but there really isn't much he can do until the parts come, supposedly any day now. The little generator is hanging in there to help the batteries along but the water situation is getting critical. We're hoping that the new LPG one will show up tomorrow and we'll be able to jury-rig something up at the well with it.