Chapter Four #2
I cleared my throat to snap myself out of business mode and focused back on telling Ellyn the process of milking.
“The shard will form a milking station around their head so they don’t thrash around as much,” I said. “It will make the process go a lot smoother.”
“And the technique?” my wife asked.
“Pinch the top with your thumb and forefinger and squeeze with the rest rather than pulling,” I said. “Their udders aren’t as strong as a cow’s.”
“Pinch and squeeze,” Ellyn repeated with a slow nod. “I can do that.”
“You’ll know when to stop because the teat deflates, just like a cow’s,” I said. “It’s pretty simple.”
“But in practice…” the blonde trailed off and raised an eyebrow.
“It’s fine once they get used to it,” I reassured her. “You go left, and I’ll go right.”
Ellyn saluted before she marched over to her first victim, while I found one of the smaller goats grazing near the fence.
One by one, we eventually made it through the lot. Karrida helped by carrying the buckets of milk into the house, while Ellyn and I continued to milk the rest of them.
Despite the frightening new experience, the goats had gotten used to the sensation pretty quickly.
“You don’t think they hate us now, do you?” Ellyn asked as we watched them continue to graze.
“If they hated us, they wouldn’t be munching on my grass like it was a banquet,” I teased. “Come on. I’ll show you how to make goat cheese.”
“You know how to make goat cheese?” the blonde asked in surprise.
“Vaguely,” I repeated the words I’d told Raeth. “I can’t promise it will be good.”
“Well, you have a habit of making everything you do good,” my wife said as she looped her free arm through mine and led me back to the house.
We set the buckets of milk down with the rest in the hallway, and the heat that was billowing from the tops had already made the house feel like a sauna.
It was nice, and it thawed the chill that had set in despite their not being any wind throughout the farm anymore.
“I’ve made a few batches,” Raeth said. “The one by the sink was the first one I did.”
I pulled off the kitchen towel from the top of the bucket and looked down at the yellowish curds settled on the top of the mixture. The strong smell of the farm hit my nostrils, but that’s exactly what I wanted.
“Alright, we need a colander and a cheesecloth,” I said as I got on my knees and rifled through one of the cupboards next to the sink.
I found the colander first, but the cheesecloth was a little harder to pin down. Eventually, Ellyn found it in a random drawer and passed it to me with a smirk.
“Thanks, babe,” I said with a quick kiss to her cheek.
I placed the colander in the sink and lined it with the cheesecloth.
After that, I poured enough curds into the cloth to fill it to almost full capacity.
Once the mushy blob of yellowy-white was settled, I pinched the corners of the cheesecloth, held them together, and squeezed the excess moisture out.
Once I felt it gain a little bit of structure beneath my hand, I got Karrida to cut me a small piece of string from the ball I kept in my miscellaneous drawer and tied it off.
“Alright, all we need to do now is let this thing drain for an hour or two,” I said. “I’ve got a few more cheesecloths, so we can have a few ready to go in no time.”
“Then what?” Karrida asked. “Is it done after that?”
“We’ll just need to shape it and salt it after it’s fully drained,” I said. “Usually, you refrigerate it, but does this stuff even go cold?”
“That’s where the magic comes in,” Ellyn said. “No one knows why, but the Emberhorn Goat’s milk never cools off. Before the shard, it was one of the few magical mysteries left over in our world.”
“Other than Starfall,” Karrida commented. “But now there’s too many to count.”
“And I’m not complaining at all,” I joked. “If it stays warm, do you think it will hold its shape?”
“Who knows.” Ellyn shrugged and peered over my shoulder at the draining cloth with narrowed blue eyes. “But I guess we’ll find out.”
“Is no one else curious as to how it tastes?” Raeth asked as her amber eyes burned a hole into one of the buckets on the floor.
Curiosity had slipped my mind while I was focusing on milking the new animals, but now that the hard job had been done, I felt the tug on my brain.
I grabbed a clean ladle and a glass and bent down next to one of the buckets. Then I scooped out a steaming spoonful and ladled it into the glass.
Warmth immediately pressed against my hand, and the fragrant waft blew into my face with the curling steam.
I took a tentative sip at first, because I’d never been a big fan of goat’s milk and how tangy it tasted. But as soon as the velvety liquid hit my tongue, my eyes widened in surprise.
The initial taste was sweet, like sipping on double cream, with only a little hint of tang that pinched at my taste buds. When I swallowed, it slid down my throat smoothly and warmed me the entire way down to my stomach. And even then I could feel it sitting in there and warming me from the inside.
“Holy shit,” I said in awe as I offered the glass to Raeth. “That’s some of the best milk I’ve ever tasted.”
Raeth took a bigger sip than me, and her amber eyes practically bulged out of her head as she swallowed.
“Wow,” she said plainly. “I’m impressed.”
Ellyn took the glass next and took a more refined, tentative sip. But when the flavor hit her tongue, she went back for seconds and took a bigger gulp.
“Delicious,” the pale-haired elf said as she dabbed at her mouth with her fingertips. “That’s going to be a hit in town.”
“Let me try,” Karrida said as she gently took the glass from Ellyn and downed the rest of the steaming liquid.
When the half-dwarf pulled the glass away from her mouth, there was a prominent line of milk coating her upper lip. All three of us burst into laughter in succession, and Karrida’s freckled cheeks turned a bright pink.
“What?” she demanded as she looked between us. “What is it?”
“You’ve got a little something on your face, ‘Rida,” Raeth said between gasps of laughter.
“Oh, no,” Karrida deadpanned and quickly wiped away the evidence from her face.
“You kinda looked like your dad,” I joked as I brushed a stray tear from my eye.
“Stop it,” the ginger-haired dwarf whined with a stomp of her foot. “I didn’t know I had a milk mustache.”
“That’s the beauty of it, sweetheart,” I teased as I pulled her blushing frame against mine. “That was one for the books.”
“Never speak of this again.” Karrida’s words were muffled against my chest, and I pressed a kiss to the top of her head in consolation.
The sound of my name being called from outside saved Karrida from any more teasing, and I quickly jogged out of the house to see my farmhands walking through the opened gate of the farm.
Three town guards waved them off before heading back toward the Mist Woods, and I felt a little bit of relief knowing Alden had remained true to his word.
Briony, a muscular human woman with ginger hair, bright blue eyes, and a spatter of freckles across her pale face, walked at the front of the farmhands, with her husband, Fergus, a lean half-elf with short blond hair and green eyes, a few paces behind her.
Brom and Gregor, the biggest of the farmhands, walked on either side of the party, like they were the unspoken protectors, and despite the cold weather, they had their sizable arms out in just a short vest.
Andriin casually waltzed at the back of the group, with his long dark hair blowing in the last wisps of breeze that made it through the opened gate before it closed behind him.
“Good morning!” I called out to them as they approached, but their sights were fixed on the new animals grazing in the field next to them.
“New recruits?” Briony asked.
“Unlikely ones, but yeah,” I said. “We found them in the Mist Woods last night. They’d gotten stuck in a creek. Ellyn thinks they fled from the mountains.”
“And they’re… friendly?” Andriin asked as his gray eyes nervously darted between the grazing onyx creatures.
“Very friendly,” I confirmed. “They just need a bit of time to get used to being milked.”
“You’ve milked them already?” Brom chuckled. “Of course you would have been on it so fast.”
“Hey, the days are shorter now,” I joked. “It’s just the cows that need milking. All of the other animals apart from the Emberhorns will need to be turned into the barn.”
“I can see to that,” Briony said before she blinked her blue eyes a few times. “Wait, did you say Emberhorns?”
“Emberhorn Goats,” I repeated with a nod.
“Wow,” Fergus breathed. “I never thought I’d see one in the flesh. They’re more common up North.”
“And yet of course they come flocking to our resident farmer,” Gregor teased with a rare smile. “Did the shard have anything to do with that?”
“Partly.” I shrugged. “I think it just made them feel more at ease.”
“Either way, we’ve got a new job,” Briony said with a clap of her hands. “Those babies look like they need washing.”
“It will be hard work,” I said. “So, I don’t mind doing it at some point.”
“If you say so,” Briony said. “I’ll start milking the cows.”
“I’ll help,” Fergus said as he followed after his wife. “Andriin. Get yourself over here, too.”
“Yes, Mom,” the tall elf playfully drawled as he traipsed after the married couple.
“How’s the town doing?” I asked Brom, who was more or less my head farmhand by this point.
“Things are slowly going back to normal,” the dark green orc informed me. “Well, as normal as it can be with a lunatic mage on the loose and a huge wall made of vines surrounding us.”
“That’s good to hear.” I sighed in relief and felt a bit of tension ease out of my shoulders. “I’m going to leave it a few more days for everyone to fully recover before I ask Alden about what to do with the goat cheese I’m making.”
“So, you milked the goats and have made goat cheese already?” Brom snorted. “Noah, it’s not even midday yet.”
“Like I said, the days are shorter.” I winked. “Did Alaek and Hunter Gibbon get started on those watchtowers?”