moved on from the pigs, he led her inside the large doe barn. That was where all the youngest kids were, in a pen all their own. Beside it was another pen for the does who were about to give birth. The rest of the barn was a big communal loafing area where the goats could wander freely in and out to eat hay from a long manger.
The goats followed Josh around the same way the dogs did, nosing their way under his hands begging for pets. It was utterly adorable, the way all the animals vied for his attention like he was their human dad.
The goats nosed at Mia too, and as she petted them Josh rattled off their names for her. Octavia. Eudora. Shirley. Madeleine. Dorothy. Willa. Pearl.
She was impressed he could not only tell the goats apart but remember all their names. “What are you going to do when you run out of authors?”
“Scientists,” he answered without hesitation.
“What about mathematicians?” she asked.
“Them too.” He flashed her a smile. “You can give me a list if you want.”
A covered walkway from the doe barn led to a separate building where the goats were milked. “The goats hate rain,” Josh explained. “The cover makes it easier to coax them into the milking parlor on rainy days.”
Inside the milking room were rows of aluminum platforms for the goats to stand on. The milking was done by machine while the goats were fed grain to keep them happy and distracted.
Mia eyed the suction tubes connected to long hoses. “Does it hurt them?”
“They seem okay with it,” Josh said. “It hurts them a lot less than not milking them, which can cause a lot of discomfort, not to mention infections like mastitis.”
Next door to the milking parlor was the part of the tour Mia was most excited about: the cheese kitchen.
Inside they found Ray, who’d just returned from the farmers market in Austin and was unloading a big Igloo cooler. Josh made the introductions and explained that Ray was his right-hand man who, along with his son Antonio, helped him keep the farm running.
“I teach math at the university,” Mia said as she peered into the large walk-in fridge where Ray was putting away leftover stock. “Antonio’s in my calculus class.”
“I hope he works hard,” Ray said.
“He does. He’s one of my top students.”
Ray looked pleased.
The fridge shelves were full of different kinds of cheeses—some packaged in plastic containers and others wrapped in butcher paper. At the back stood a rolling rack that held at least a dozen uncovered wheels of cheese. Mia’s mouth watered at the sight of all that naked cheese sitting around, begging to be eaten.
“How’d we do this morning?” Josh asked.
“Good,” Ray said. “I sold out of the cajeta.”
“I should make more. We’re running low.” Josh eyed the stock Ray was returning to the fridge. “Looks like the cracked pepper chèvre isn’t selling.”
“It’s the least popular. You should think about replacing it with one of the new ones you’ve been experimenting with.”
“I will when we run out of labels. The question is which one?”
Ray finished emptying his cooler and came out of the fridge. “You know my vote.”
“The Anaheim chili?”
“That’s it.” Ray smiled at Mia on the way out the door. “It was nice meeting you.”
After Ray was gone, Josh shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and gazed around the kitchen. “Anyway, this is where I make the cheese. I’m afraid it’s not very exciting.”
It looked a lot like a typical commercial kitchen. There were stainless steel prep counters and sinks, a stove, a heavy-duty mixer, and of course the large walk-in fridge that held a veritable treasure trove of cheese.
“Do you make it all yourself?” Mia asked.
Josh nodded. “Most weekdays I let Ray handle the morning milking while I’m in here making yogurt or cheese. It takes a few hours to pasteurize, cool, and culture the milk, then I’ve got to scoop and drain the curd, and later there’s the salting and packaging. It all varies depending on the product I’m making.”
She liked listening to him talk about cheesemaking. There was something incredibly sexy about the air of comfortable authority he got when he was talking about something he was good at. “How many kinds of cheese do you make?” she asked so he’d keep talking.
“Depends on the season. I’m always experimenting and swapping them out. There’s usually about five different flavors of chèvre at any given time. That plus the feta, yogurt,