Black Mesa Ranch
Snowflake, Arizona, USA
Artisan Cheese
Nubian Goats
Cheese and Candy Information and Online Ordering Page
Featured pages on this site
Updated!
We have revamped our Ranch Workshop Packages!
In addition to our 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
2 Awards 2008 ADGA National Competition
4 Awards 2005 ADGA National Competition
3 Awards 2004 ADGA National Competition
(available seasonally)
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:
July 19, 2010
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Endorsed by more than 36 humane organizations, the Certified Humane Raised and Handled® program is nationally recognized as the Gold Standard for certifying animal welfare.
Arizona Grown!
Friday, October 01, 2004
beautiful, sunny, 70’s
Made a couple of BIG raw Caprianas (getting great yield from the milk these days). Got most of the orders in for next week - trying a new plan to re-organize my time schedule and not do as much last-minute run-around.
Sub-divided the buck pen to create a breeding area and bred 4 more does (Clove, Coriander, Stella and Cassia).
Converted the milking system to a dual-scale weight system instead of the milk meters. Everything looked and acted great until we actually began milking. Couldn’t get the scales to register any milk! We suspect there is some “buffer” circuit that isn’t allowing the slowly increasing weight of the flows to record. It will require more research and probably the purchase of different sales. Darn, we were SO close to having it done.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
sunny, nice, 70’s. Evening showers
Worked on putting orders together for delivery/sipping Monday.
Bred more does again: Cassia, Edia, Cory and Clove all went into the new pen for turns.
Worked more with new milking set-up. These scales definitely will not work for this application - too much buffering or not sensitive enough. We are, for the time being, weighing each bucket after each doe, and will have to do the math to calculate their production at a later time. K will look into other scale options. K cleaned the meters well in preparation for shipping them to the buyers in AK.
One of the 5-week old meat chicks looked “off” so we butchered it today. Had it for dinner. Yum.
Fixed the light in the Stallion stall and made a new hook-place for one of the chains keeping the horses from getting in the goat’s pen.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
mostly sunny, 70’s
Made feta. Packaged cheeses for orders going out tomorrow.
Bob Allgood @ BMR to see operation. He’s with a Tucson mining co, recently transferred there, wife is a goat person thinking of starting a small dairy when she moves down from WY.
Monday, October 04, 2004
sunny, 80’s
Milked a little early in order to get D out the door for all his errands.
Got confirmation that we’ll be doing the catered lunch for the value Solar alternative homes tour 10/23. To be set-up @ Cedar Hills Health Center.
D to Pinetop etc: AZ Shuttle, Tried to get truck brakes fixed but they had wrong parts, Bank (big deposit), Amelias, PO, Eddies, WalMart, Natures realm, Feed Store, Basha’s. D to Eddies Country Store in Pinetop to do cheese sampling/sales call.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
sunny, 80’s
Made a fresh cheese batch.
Bred Lea and Laurel (11 does total so far, 9 in the last 5 days I think)
Burned trash, hauled what remaining downed barbwire bunches we know of to dump site, moved feed around for bucks, re-mounted a dog feeder where the horses can’t get to it, re-secured house toilet, fixed buck fencing, repaired buck feeders, did first of month battery-generator-etc maintenance chores.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
sunny and nice
Stared a fresh cheese batch
Worked on framing the new generator shed most of the day. Got the posts set, rafters up and panel support pieces almost done.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
sunny, 80 Bees
Unbagged and chilled previous fresh cheese batch.
Attempted to harvest honey and start re-queening process on our two hives. What a pain in the butt. How the hell are you supposed to find one bee in a hive of 60,000? K ended up really stirring things up by the end, dumping most of the bees off the frames onto the ground in hopes of spotting the queens without any luck. On top of that, there was NO honey in a single one of the honey super frames. As a matter of fact, the south hive hardly had any honey at all, certainly not enough to get through winter. We put feeders on with a couple gallons of 2:1 syrup on each.
K stained (BMR Green) the 5 wall panels we will be putting up on the shed next day we work on it.
Finally got our copies of the Dairy Goat Journal Magazine with our article form July. It looks good. D to PO (picked up new queen bees), Feed store, lunch togo from McD’s, hardware store
Friday, October 08, 2004
sunny, breezes, 80
Started a fresh cheese batch. Made 15# spreads, rolled previous cheese into logs, made BisGoaties
Made sales calls and took orders. Made initial contact with John Sharpe at the Turquoise Room at La Posada hotel in Winslow. Got a call from ACF member Sabatian who is chef at a new German restaurant in Pinetop opening later this month for a cheese order.
Angel is still on her “I don’t want to be milked” kick. K tried chasing her out from under the dairy deck when it was time tonight, by tossing stones in her direction. One went through the bathroom window. Oops.
Worked with the bees again. To our complete amazement, the queen for the south hive was sitting in a small cluster of other bees on the lid where K had dumped thousands of them yesterday. She was not marked or clipped so we know that she was a supercedure queen. We removed her and were able to introduce the new queen in her cage and hope all goes well. Not so lucky with the north hive. K again went through frame by frame without finding the queen. She even tried separating the likely frames into one hive body and driving the bees from it, though the queen excluder using “Honey Robber” stinky stuff. No luck at all. I guess we’ll just try to keep the other new queen alive and try again next week after things calm down a bit. Man o man were they pissed by the end of our fooling with them.
Both hives had polished off their sugar syrup from yesterday so we fed each again with 2 gallons of 2:1
Saturday, October 09, 2004
sunny, 80, breezes
Bagged yesterdays fresh cheese, made 2 truffle bases, dipped about 6 dz asst truffles, prepped for this weeks orders, finished bisgoaties.
K worked with Li’l but had a hard time getting her to lunge properly. The girl is sweet but needs lots of working with.
Harvested tomatoes (made a bisque), Processed Fresnos, and melons. Goats got lots of past-prime produce.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
cloudy all day, 70’s with some rain
Rolled previous fresh cheese batch into logs, prepped and wrapped orders for delivery/shipping tomorrow. Made 2 cheddars. Did cheese affinage work. Banded spreads form yesterday.
Got milk meters ready to ship to buyers in AK. Got some stuff ready to ship to Beth and Chris, including an empty honey jar.
K did lots of bookkeeping work between helping me package.
Monday, October 11, 2004
sunny AM, increasing clouds with afternoon storms and rain
Did final packing of out-going orders. Unmoulded cheddars and left to air dry
Remaining queen bee and her workers not looking so good. K thinks they might just be too cold (it’s about 65-70 in office) so we fired up the chocolate temperer (bowl not rotating) and set the temp to around 90*F and put them in the bowl. It seemed to revive them some but, to be honest, we wouldn’t be all that bummed if they died and we didn’t have to deal with the hive again. Plan is to do them mid-day tomorrow, providing everybody is still intact.
D to town: deliveries to Amelia’s, Torreon, Charlie Clark’s, Eddies Market (candy samples). PO (closed for Columbus Day, have to go back tomorrow to ship orders), bank, Walmart, Chinese lunch, feed store, dropped off window for glass replacement, stopped by Alvarez about truck park brake and leaf spring (parts are in, needs several hours to do the work)
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
38*F this AM, sunny, 70’s
Started fresh cheese. Turned drying cheddar.
Sexed the rabbits we’d sequestered last night: 5 older does, 3 young does and 12 young bucks. Got 4 old does and 4 young bucks caged for the feed store and let the remaining 4 does out into their colony.
After D got back from town we played with the 2 bee hives some more. The new queen for the North hive was still barely alive, though all the workers were dead this AM. K did a quick search of the hive but still couldn’t fine the old queen, decided that they were doing fine with her, reassambled the set, dumped the new queen in to fend for herself, and gave them a couple gallons of 1:1 syrup. Also fed the other hive a similar amount, removed the queen cage and put back the removed hive body frame. K says we’re done with them for the season aside form weekly feedings.
After lunch we butchered 9 rabbits ranging in size from very small to one BIG girl.
D worked in the garden, mostly harvesting chiles and peppers. D to town: PO, Feed store (deliver rabbits, pick up COB), truck gas, picked up glass and window for milking parlor.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
39*F early, sunny AM, clouding up in the afternoon, 70’s
Got measurements for metal roofing for generator shed and got it ordered
Bagged previous fresh cheeses. Made 2 Capriana
2 of the meat chickens we’re supposed to butcher next week looked “wobbly” so we did them out this AM. Made chix noodle soup with the bones for lunch.
Processed more chiles and peppers.
K rode Sandy for a small ride today with new, smaller saddle and liked it a lot.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
sunny and nice
Unbagged fresh cheese batch and rolled, took capriana’s out of brine to dry, seasoned up 50 ea chipotle, japapeno, a and herb logs for Harvest festival and got them wrapped and labeled with 50 plain too. Worked on signage and misc printing for festival. K got “merchandise” all together for it too.
Got inquiry for large candy order, about $1000 in rubbles, from a real estate firm in MA
Got more info on the possibility of having our cheese entries for the ADGA contest hand delivered. Still not sure if that will happen or if we will be shipping them overnight to Albuquerque on Monday.
Moved a bunch of feed around for/to the bucks/horses and brought a couple of straw bales to Smokey’s shelter.
Friday, October 15, 2004
prep for harvest festival tomorrow - got all product together, printed more signs, organized all tent parts, loaded the truck with tables, chairs, tent, etc.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Snowfalke Harvest Festival! Did pretty well but not nearly as big as the Corn festival. Made about $565 from 9 AM - 2 PM.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
partly cloudy, breezy
Worked on assembling orders for delivery/shipment tomorrow.
Monday, October 18, 2004
mostly sunny, wind!
D t town: PO, Ameila’s delivery, Natures realm delivery, Munich Haus Delivery, lunch, Walmart, Home Depot, Doctor shopping (found a good one I hope)
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
mostly sunny, WIND, 60’s
Worked on designing and building the 2004 4-fold holiday candy brochure which we hope to get out on or about 11/1/04
We were supposed to butcher out the 25 or so meat chickens today but it was way too windy to do it outside and there was no good place to do It out of the elements - they would have been completely sand-crusted.
We decide to erect the 10x20 metal-framed, canvas covered, horse run-in I’d bought a month or so ago. “Assembles in 30 minutes” it said on the box, but they obviously weren’t doing it in a gale-force sand storm. Actually the frame went together very quickly and even the roof and end panel canvases weren’t too bad getting attached. The problems came with inserting the legs, in finding a way to keep the whole thing from taking off in the wind. We ended up screwing the flange feet to long 2x6 boards and weighting themdown with almost 50 concrete blocks. That worked pretty well until we tried to put on one of the 20’ long side panels. The canvas really caught the wind, knocked off most of the concrete blocks and we almost lost the whole thing. We quickly rolled up the side and re-thought the plan, eventually came up with the idea of stakes and cables at the corners and support columns. We, of course, didn’t have stakes and cables so we sank T-posts and used tie-down straps between thrm and the structure. It seemed to work pretty well but, as it was too late now to start the butchering project, we left the side up and quit for the day.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
mostly sunny, very WINDY
Bagged yesterday’s fresh cheese batch
Set up for butchering under the new tent structure and were very glad for it. The wind was nasty and blowing sand would have been intollarable without the tent. Took about 3 hours to butcher, skin and gut the 22 remaining meat chickens. They were huge at just 8 week of age. Took another couple of hours to clean, cut-up and freeze the meat. The boneless/skinless breasts were at least 2 lbs each. Had hot wings for dinner.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
partly cloudy, increasing with showers PM, 60’s
Unbagged previous fresh cheese and started another batch.
Did prep for catering gig Saturday - bakes chocolate chip & sugar cookies and a big pan of brownies.
Did lots of end-o-season stuff on the garden. Expecting sub-freezing temps tomorrow night. Picked last of chilies and peppers, tomatoes, lettuces, cleaned out melons, cut down asparagus tops and remaining corn stalks, trimmed back some of the chives and parsley. Pulled most of the basil, harvest the last of the pumpkins, Brought in several Fresno Chile plants to try and over-winter. Processed a bunch of chiles into “poppers”. Started cooking off a pan full of chix breasts for parmesans.
Friday, October 22, 2004
mostly sunny, breezes, around 60F
Made a fresh cheese. Hung yesterdays fresh cheese.
Worked most of the day on prep for the catered party tomorrow_ made green chile corn chowders. Prepped salad & dressings, made a big batch of bread, decorated sugar cookies etc. Fried off a chicken, cut up and cooked up a couple dozen breast pieces for Parmesans”
K rode Li’l for a while, sorting out and getting to know the rig.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
hard frost overnight, nice day - sunny, 60’s, breezes
Catered alternative home tour lunch for 26 ppl @ cedar ridge clinic.
Did a little work around the animal barns, setting up a new “up place” for the goats (straw bales and plywood), re-arranging the kid creep, moving feed around etc.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
sunny, breezes, 60’s Made a couple of Caprianas. Unbagged previous fresh cheese.
Made candies and cheeses for orders going out tomorrow. Spend much of the day getting all the various products ready to send to the ADGA competition
Monday, October 25, 2004
mostly sunny, sprinkles late
Got cheeses off to Albuquerque for ADGA convention contest. Met Nicki and friend (who were heading to the convention) at Eva’s in town, had lunch and gave them the 2 big boxes.
D & K to town: drop off cheeses for competition, lunch @ Eva’s, PO, bank, Val-u-Solar (drop off left over beverages form weekend and get paid!).
(Later) D to town: Propane, Diesel, Pepsi, Bank (again), fence places to check out round pens, truck gas, eddies (drop off corporate paperwork), ACF meeting @ Chez DeJardins.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
cold and wet
BMR Corporate board meetng. Lasted 2 hours. Had Bean dip.
Friday, October 29, 2004
Still cold and windy but no rain at least
Started a fresh cheese batch.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
sunny, 60’s, gorgeous
Started a fresh cheese batch, bagged yesterdays batch, processed previous batch into mostly logs plus froze some. Made GST spread, a hot fudge recipe test, Made and dipped candies for Monday delivery and started to put together cheese orders to deliver/ship.
Nicki emailed that she had picked up our ribbons from the ADGA competition but we still don’t know exactly what or how many we actually won.
Fed bees. Thought they’d be more appreciative so went with out suits or even screen helmets. D got 3 stings, K none and she did most of the work (after going back for her suit when the bees got so pissy).
Spent a couple of hour in the garden. Harvested last tomatoes and cleaned out plants, started pulling up irrigation parts and getting ready to close the whole thing down for the winter. Goats got lots of things to eat and did most of the work for us of cleaning off the bean trellis. Bees were even pissy over in the garden.
Let Smokey out to “play” with Sandy and Li’l this afternoon. They all got along surprisingly well, of course Sandy is in MAJOR heat so that helped. Poor girl, Smokey loves her but thinks she’s mom and only want to suckle, we think.
Smokey and Li'l get acquiainted