Goat song
The best book I read while on
our cruise
was Brad Kessler's Goat
Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of
Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese. The book traces the
first year in the author's life with Nubian milk goats, and I warn you
that after you finish it you will want milk goats too. I had to
remind myself repeatedly that I wouldn't have been able to leave the
farm if I got milk goats and thus wouldn't have been on the cruise.
The book was almost blog-like in parts, a format that I obviously
enjoy. One chapter ran through the highlights of a season of
milking, day by day, and another chapter was a blow by blow account of
cheese-making. He mixed in some monks, a visit to artisanal
cheese-makers in France, and the effects that herding has had on our
language and culture. When I closed the cover, I could almost
smell new hay, meadow flowers, and goat cheese lingering in our cabin.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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