We thought we would try and find a goat farm to stay on as we have got a bit of a taste for goats cheese since we have been in France and there are so many varieties.   After leaving Annecy we went from blue skies to torrential rain, to hail and then back to blue skies again – looking on the positive side Mika got a bit of a wash which we had been promising her for a week or so… .

The farm was situated in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain – I guess if I had thought about it that would have been where we would look for goats – and they had approximately 100 females and three lucky males 🙂

The farm is part of the ‘France Passion’ so in exchange for staying on their land we felt that it was only fair to sample some of the produce ….. Saucisson a la chevre (that is charcuterie sausage to the english), Goats Cheese Brick (Demi Sec), Honey beer (ok, that had nothing to do with goats but looked interesting) and goats milk yogurt…..this is turning out to be quite an expensive alternative to campsites…. but they were all lovely.

We learnt probably more than the average person wants to know about goats – they lactate for about 8 months of the year producing on average 2 litres of goats milk a day, on average they have about 6 or 7 years of ‘milking’ life and the gestation period is 5 months….. As part of the cheese making process there is a very rich/acidic bi-product which is produced (I guess the equivelant of whey) which rather than wasting, they use to raise a handful of pigs with – so no waste, everything on the farm was efficiently planned and managed.

It was an interesting (and tasty) stop well worth the trip, all we have to do now is find a place that produces blue goats cheese as we have only found it a couple of times but it is lovely.