Oh the Goats!

My sister-in-law Elise and I always joke about the Minnesota accent when we talk on the phone, so when I chose the title for this post, I imagine it being pronounced with an accent from the great white north! Oh the goats! 

Anyway, back to the goats.  Here in my village of Saint Quentin la Poterie, we are lucky enough to have a small goat cheese producer that makes the most delicious fresh goat cheese.  It's especially delicious at this time of year because the mama goats have just had baby goats and they are producing the most delicious milk imaginable, which translates into the most delicious goat cheese imaginable.  But, I am not writing this post to tell you about goat cheese, but about the whey that is a by-product of the cheese making, and that is the main ingredient in pruning paste.  What, you might ask, is pruning paste?  Well it probably exists in many forms, but the one I am talking about is a biodynamic preparation that we spray on the vines just after pruning.  It is supposed to help the vines heal more quickly and to fend off nasty molds and bacteria that can cause diseases in the vineyards.

You make the pruning paste out of composted cow manure (which we get from a biodynamic preparations service),  bentonite or montmorillonite clay, and  whey (from cows, goats or sheep). In French whey is called "petit lait" or little milk, which I think is a much better name than whey.  We go to our local goat cheese maker to get the "petit lait" of which they have plenty.  They feed it back to the goats, it's great for their digestive system and for their coats, makes them nice and shiny, that is if a goat's coat can be shiny...  The bacteria in the whey and the manure have an antiseptic effect on the wood of the vines, limiting the development of other bacterias, they clay helps it stick to the vines.  Matt then uses a backpack sprayer to spray the concoction onto the freshly pruned vines. I say Matt does it, because I hate using the backpack sprayer, it's heavy and it hurts my shoulders, one of the few physical activities in the vineyard that I refuse to do.  Well, refuse might be a little strong, I would do it if I absolutely had to, let's just say that I prefer not to.

Anyway, the best part about making the pruning paste is going to get the "petit lait" because you get to see the goats!  The last two times Matt went, they had little teeny goats that had just been born that same day, so cute!  I went to get the whey this week, and they are a little bigger now, but still so much fun to see.

Comments

[Iris]

Very interesting, I didn't know this after pruning treatment - I just used a similar mixture for bigger tree wounds after tree-pruning.

For the "petit lait": did you know that in Australia a scientist has made research about treating wines with petit lait against the oidium fungus and that it proved to be very successful?

I understand that you don't like the bagpack-machines, for me too, it's work I don't like a lot. Especially if you have to go uphill with a full machine - and in our place, everything is "uphill":-)))