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!
Sunflower season
8/1/01:
1st of month chores today including check power equipment, Battery water levels (all OK), Generator oil ( added 1 Qt.), Generator Hobbs (163.5 hours), checked propane at house and at the generator, checked water softener salt (OK). Goats weights: Trudy 165#, Angel 135#, Nutmeg 69#, Ordoño 35#, Anise 31#. Paul off today.
8/2/01:
We spent a good deal of time today discussing the pros and cons of buying a buck goat of our own for breeding purposes and decide that it makes good sense for many reasons: it’s a tough drive out to anywhere that would have a buck; the quality of the area bucks we’ve seen is pretty poor; Trudy is know to have “silent heats” which would make determining when to take her to a buck more problematic; with a buck on site we could explore the possibility of studding him out and making something of a business of the goats; plus we wanted the new experience of working with our own buck. We will begin looking for a source for a good pure bred Nubian buck ASAP. We begin making plans for the paddock and house for him.
Got a call today that we had won a $65 credit at the feed store from their monthly ticket drawing! Thank you Western Feeds in Snowflake. Good rains late in the day have us “rivered in”.
We put rabbit Lucy in with Paul for breeding.
8/3/01:
Went to town and Showlow today: Pepsi, Wal-Mart, MVD (horse trailer registration transfer), fence supply place (material for buck pen and orchard fence) feed store, lunch. While loading some hay at the feed store I dropped my eye glasses from my shirt pocket but didn’t notice it. When I shut the tailgate they smashed big-time. OUCH! We had made arrangements with Felipe, the man from whom we bought the horse trailer, to also buy a small LPG refrigerator for aging my cheeses for $100 if it worked. He called and said he had it hooked up and it was working fine so we went and picked it up.
The order form NECS arrived this afternoon and I made a batch of Mozzarella… PERFECT! It must have been a bad batch of rennet from Caprine Supply.
Beautiful mozzarella!
8/4/01:
We had discovered that we didn’t have enough of the old , used woven wire fencing to complete the orchard project and that working with it was becoming a royal pain in the butt. We decided that we would buy new fencing for the 3 remaining sides and had purchased 60”, 12.5 gauge field fencing yesterday. Today we worked all day on installing it.
Fencing at the Orchard
We noticed that dog Max is limping pretty badly today on his rear leg(s). We worry that he may have hip problems coming on.
8/5/01:
Worked again in the orchard on fencing and did some re-grading there with the tractor too.
8/6/01:
Made Mozzarella and ricotta today.
8/7/01:
Got a propane delivery today. 125 gals at the generator and 50 at the house. The generator Hobbs is at 172.4 hours which gives us about a 1.4 GPH usage rate, on the high side of expected.
8/8/01:
Filled the water tank about 2/3 full. Made 4-gallon Cheddar and Ricotta cheeses today but managed to overcook the curds so it seemed dry at pressing. Lucy is removed from Paul’s cage.
8/9/01:
Paul off.
8/10/01:
To town today: P.O., feed store, gun shop, bank. Burned trash today. Palpated rabbit Reba, possibly due in 7 days but no sign of pregnancy. Put her in with Paul again for breeding.
8/11/01:
Took a big walk up and across the mesa with the 3 littlest goats and they did great. Goat weights: Nutmeg 75#, Ordoño 40#, Anise 33#.
Boulder scrambling up the mesa
Made a 4-gallon cheddar today.
8/12/01:
Worked with the tractor grading the buck pen area and trimmed the brush and trees there in preparation for fencing it.
8/13/01:
Butcher day. Today we processed 25 of the 50 Cornish Rock cockerels we brought in as chicks about 9 weeks ago and they were SUPERB to work with. We were amazed at the difference in conformation and quality in comparison to the last batch of “mixed heavies” we worked with. These birds are incredibly plump and well filled out and are easy to process as well. We saved out a couple from the freezer for supper and they tasted as good as they looked. These chicken are worth raising for meat!
Now that's a lot of chicken!
Got a nice storm through this evening.
Big rain
8/14/01
Butcher day #2 and we processed the remaining 25 Cornish Rock cockerels. Also made 4-gallon Mozzarella and Ricotta cheeses this evening. Removed Reba from Paul’s cage.
8/15/01:
Mucked out the chicken coop today and brought 3 big tractor loads to the garden for composting. Did some tractor work around the North house, grading to aid in proper storm drainage. Patched a leak in the goat house roof. Filled the water tank. Burned trash. Paul off today.
8/16/01:
Palpated Chesney this morning. She should be due in 1 week but no signs. Put her back in with Paul for breeding. Ordoño’s banded purse still hasn’t come off and he has been knocking it and making it bleed. We make the decision to clip off as much as we can and the procedure goes quite smoothly. There is still a small tab sticking down but we hope that it will now be able to heal better. Processed a lot of fried zucchini for the freezer.
8/17/01:
Made 4-gallon cheddar and ricotta cheeses today. We discovered a pretty nasty barb wire gouge on dog Bosco’s chest. Maybe 1.5” long but very deep. He must have had it for a while and has been licking it but it is very raw and swollen looking. Being late on a Friday there is really nobody to call so we doctor it as best as we can and will keep it clean and disinfected over the weekend, give him some antibiotics and reassess again at the beginning of the week.
8/18/01:
Worked most of the day on the fencing for the buck’s yard. Also did a 10-hour maintenance on the tractor.
8/19/01:
Harvested “T”-posts from around the property for finishing the buck’s pen fencing then completed that job temporarily until the structure for them is built.
8/20/01:
Made 4-gallon cheddar and ricotta cheeses today. Chesney is removed from Paul’s cage.
8/21/01:
Worked on making the horse trailer road-ready. First we decided to investigate a funny “squeaking bang” noise it made on one side when it went over bumps. We figured that it was just a loose piece of metal that needed knocking into place. No such luck. It turned out that one of the leaf springs on the right side was broken so we towed it over to the barn and started serious work on re-welding the pars together. It was tough going but the end result looked and felt solid as a rock. We also took the opportunity to grease up all the wheel and suspension fittings. Next we re-wired the whole trailer lighting with a new harness and new tail lights. Now it’s ready for a trip!
Filled water tank about ¾ full. Palpated rabbit Sage, due in 7 days, with no sign of pregnancy. Put her back in with Paul for breeding.
8/22/01:
Worked at the buck pen today doing the layout for the slab and stem walls. K did all the excavations while I screened and delivered gravel for the concrete work to the job site. Made 1-gallon soft goat cheese. Worked on the horse trailer tail lights again to make them work with the plug outlet on the truck. Got it now.
8/23/01:
Went into Showlow today: Wal-Mart, lunch, picked up rototiller at Sears (they ended up replacing the whole engine short block a $350 part plus labor all under warrantee), gas, P.O. We had purchased a slightly used manual cream separator from Claudia, the lady in Flagstaff from whom we have bought our goats, and it arrived today. No instructions were included but we gave it a shot anyway heating the milk to 62°F and giving it a whirl. It didn’t work very well. What cream we got out was very thin and at one point we had it spraying milk all over the kitchen. This will require some research to make work right. Tried to make Mozzarella and Ricotta but both flopped completely. I think I just wasn’t concentrating on the project at hand. Did some tractoring work on San Carlos Rd and brought back a big load of nice sand from the wash for the concrete work on the buck’s house.
8/24/01:
Big trip to Flagstaff to pick up our new buck! First we returned some rabbit carriers to a woman, went to Sam’s Club, Home Depot and lunch there. We then went to Claudia’s. The buck (she called him Lambrusco) was not in very good shape. He apparently had just been returned from a bad situation where he wasn’t given proper care. Compared to our Nutmeg (about the same age, 5.5 months) he seemed quite small , his hoofs were in pretty bad shape with some serious twisting of the hoof material, he had thick and ugly horn scurs and we noticed a huge lump on the side of his neck about the size of a kiwi fruit! This was the buck that we had been trying to negotiate down from her $400 price with papers but had decided to get him without the papers for $60! We were now wondering if he was even worth that. One of our biggest concerns was the neck lump. We soon found it on almost all of her male goats. She thought it was probably a reaction to the shots they were recently given but wasn’t sure. We really weren’t about to bring home a goat with possibly some nasty, communicable disease. Claudia called a friend in town who is very knowledgeable about goats and she was able to come over. In her opinion also the lump was probably from the shots and the rest of our concerns about him could be all dealt with through our improved care. He is a very good looking goat (overlooking the above mentioned short-comings) and comes from some exceptional good stock. We discuss leaving him with her until the lump goes down but that means another big drive up to get him in the near future. Yuck We decided that we could take him with us, keep him in quarantine from our herd and return him if anything is really wrong. That brings up the problem of him getting awfully lonely for a month. Goats are very social creatures and don’t do well by themselves. So now we discuss her “loaning” us a companion goat, a wether or something for a month. Again yuck for having to make the trip again so soon. She then remembers that she is getting back a little black and white wether she loaned to a neighbor for company of a goat they bought from her and wondered if we would just want to have him to keep, no charge. We discussed it and agreed, loaded up the buck into the horse trailer and followed her to the neighbors for the wether. We then headed home with the 63# buck “Guajillo” (wah-hee’-yo), and the 33# wether “Chocolate Chipotle” (Choco for short). The repaired trailer performed flawlessly on the trip and we are even using it as the temporary shelter for the boys in their yard until we get the permanent structure built.
Guajillo and Choco arrive at BMR
8/25/01:
Aside from a brief time for unloading the lumber and groceries from yesterday’s trip we spend the day hanging out with the new goats. Apparently Choco has been through some bad situations too because he is terrified of people. He interacts pretty normally with Guajillo but won’t let us get near him with out flinching away. We’ve not seen this behavior in a goat and are used to them being so friendly that you can’t get rid of them most of the time. We sure have our work cut out for us for in getting both these boys socialized to our standards. We orally worm both the boys and lice powdered them too.
8/26/01:
Today we worked mostly on the form work for the slab and stem walls for the buck house. I brought back another tractor load of sand from the wash for the concrete work. Made a 4-gallon Romano cheese. Filled the water tank and irrigated the orchard.
8/27/01:
Poured 2 sections of concrete slab for the buck house and built the remaining form work.
The solar guy Matt who took our order for the new array over a month ago called today and now says that he can’t get the panels we want. We hope the rest (rack, post connectors, etc) is on the way but the delay has cost us at least $200 because the alternate place we were going to get them from was having a sale that has long since ended.
Wild flowers continue to be in riotous bloom, this week especially in shades of yellow and pastel lavender. The valley is exceptionally green everywhere just now from the summer monsoons (we are just a tad behind on rainfall fpr the year from the average but well ahead of last year). We take Sage out of Paul’s cage.
8/28/01:
We poured the remainder of the concrete slab and the stem walls for the buck house then did some tractor work grading around the structure.
Got hit with some powerful thunder storms though this afternoon.
Rainbow over BMR
Laptop computer won’t power up this evening. Still under warrantee and I arrange to send it back where they will fix it.
Solar guy Matt now says that he can’t get ANY of the components we ordered over a month ago. Says that the company (Kyocerea) won’t do business with him now. Hmmmmmmm. Us either I guess. Paul off today.
8/29/01:
One –year anniversary of our buying the ranch!! Contacted Val-u-Solar, another company in town and arranged to have somebody come out tomorrow to see our set-up and discuss what we want to do. Call to arrange pick-up of computer. Filled water tank and pumped up flatbed trailer tires. Went to town and Showlow: pick up new eye glasses, Wal-Mart shopping, lunch, bought big bag of DE at tack shop, got 1 ton of hay (19 bales) at feed store. Ran into hard rain on way home but had hay pretty well covered. 1 bale got wet. Found several really gross bugs on 2 sunflowers and removed the whole plants. Saw a huge (6”) bright green caterpillar on a Cotoneaster and pulled him off. Paul off again today.
8/30/01:
Chuck with Val-u-Solar came at 9 AM for his appointment. We show him our system and explain that we want to add another solar array identical to the 2 we have up and running now. He took some measurements and drawings and said he’d get back to us with a quote in the next couple of days. A part from Dell arrives Fed Ex and the computer is picked up by Airborne Freight. Did a bunch of gardening. Bird netted strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Yellow-green with black striped caterpillar invasion with THOUSANDS of them marching off the mesa, across our property! Fortunately they seem mostly interested in the native “weed” floras and not my garden or orchard. Made 4-gallon Swiss cheese. Tried cream separator again with milk at 95° and it worked well. Large pack of coyotes very close at around 4 AM. Paul off again.
8/31/01:
Trimmed all 7 goats’ hoofs this morning. All the goats except Choco have snuffly, sneezy, coughy colds that they got from the new buck, we’re sure. So much for our quarantine procedures I guess. Goat weights: Trudy 165#, Angel 130#, Nutmeg 78#, Ordoño 45#, Anise 42#, Guajillo 66#, Choco 33#. Worked in the orchard making a trellis for the grapes. Removed all the forms from the buck house concrete work and graded some more. The large raven flock is back on the mesa. Large pack of coyotes very close to the house at around midnight. Palpated Lucy. No sign of pregnancy so we put her in with Paul for breeding again.