Why a goat dairy?
After considering a children’s bookstore, an Inn and a restaurant, we visited a goat dairy because we loved goat cheese. We fell in love with the animals. A farmstead goat dairy where we raised goats and made cheese suited my interest in food as well as my desire to do physical work and be with animals. A goat dairy seemed to not only meet our lifestyle criteria; it was also appealing because it was a unique enterprise. How did we get started? We bought books, attended goat shows, and talked to many people. We found a consultant from Wisconsin who helped us have the confidence to move forward with very little experience. We made friends with Joan Bowen, a veterinarian who was a goat expert and generous with her advice and support. We started with five goats, which grew to 25 very quickly when we exercised an opportunity to buy an entire healthy herd at a bargain price. We began immediately making plans for building barns, and designing a farmstead dairy where we would raise the goats a
