Cheese company leads way for goat dairies

Randolph – Newborn lambs and goat kids gamboling around farms are a sure sign of spring in Vermont.

But at the new Ayers Brook Goat Dairy, adorable baby goats will be a year-round presence as part of Vermont Creamery's efforts to build a successful model for goat dairy farming in the state. Vermont Creamery makes specialty cheese and dairy products.

Touring a visitor recently through the new barn at the company's latest venture, Vermont Creamery co-owner Allison Hooper explained dairy goats need to be bred and milked throughout the year to provide the busy production facility in nearby Websterville with the raw ingredients needed to craft the fresh and ripened goat cheeses that are in demand across the country.

Although half of Vermont Creamery's product line is now made with cows' milk sourced from the St. Albans Co-op, it all started with goats back in 1984 when Hooper, now 54, was working as a dairy lab technician in Vermont after a stint as a cheese apprentice in France.

European-style cheeses were much less common in the U.S. at the time and Bob Reese, then the state's agriculture marketing director, asked if she could make fresh goat cheese for an official dinner at the request of a local French-trained chef.

The special batch of cheese was such a hit that Hooper and Reese, with the support of their respective spouses, went on to become business partners in Vermont Butter and Cheese Company, later renamed Vermont Creamery.

Thirty years later, their award-winning specialty food company ships 3 million pounds of product annually and has played a significant role in building both the local and national artisanal cheese community. The company and associated new farm also now employ second-generation members from each family: Miles Hooper, 22, is responsible for crop management and maintenance at the dairy while Matt Reese, 27, works with his father on the financial side of the business.

Got milk?

Throughout the years, however, sourcing enough regionally produced, high-quality goats' milk year-round to fill growing nationwide demand for Vermont Creamery products has been a challenge, Allison Hooper explained in the airy new barn or, as she called it, "a palace for milking goats," which was completed in June.

A variety of goats including snow-white Saanen, French Alpine, Toggenburg and the distinctive LaMancha with almost invisible ears all munched happily and looked up curiously at the human visitors. The first kids were born in October to the new herd and the dairy is now milking about 182 with a total of 430 animals on the farm. The eventual goal is to milk 700.

Vermont Creamery currently buys goats' milk from 18 farms in Vermont (including Ayers Brook) and from an additional 10 farms within a 200-member co-op in Ontario, but, "ideally," Hooper said, "we would buy all of our milk from Vermont."

Over the years Hooper and Reese have tried numerous strategies to develop more goat dairy partners within the state. The new dairy is the latest, and most significant, tactic in this ongoing effort, and something that Hooper said she has been scheming about for years.

Simply put, she said, "We felt that in order to solicit farmers and advertise that this is a viable enterprise, we really had to do it ourselves...With this we can say, 'We feel your pain. We understand the labor issues, the feed issues, the animal health issues. We can work through this together.'"

Serious business

Despite the extreme price swings cow dairies have experienced over recent decades compared with relatively more stable pricing for goats' milk, moving to goats is not necessarily an obvious transition or promising new opportunity for farmers.

The challenges, Hooper and Reese knew, range from operational to cultural.

While the price fetched by goats' milk may be higher, Hooper explained, each goat naturally gives less milk than each cow while labor costs per animal are not significantly lower, so the labor to milk ratio is higher in a goat dairy. Research on best practices and general support for goat dairies are also harder to come by, Hooper said.

In the milking parlor, one of Ayers Brook's six employees, Heather Green, 48, was cleaning between the two daily milking shifts. Her grandfather owned a cow dairy in Brookfield, Green said, and she has milked since she was 17.

Green's brother had considered milking goats at one point, she recalled, "and I said, 'Why would you want to do that?'?but I've come around."

On the plus side, Green explained, "they're smaller and easier on your body. You get pushed around but not as much." But, she added, pointing to a pocket torn from her coveralls, "They like to chew on everything and they like to get out. They're troublesome."

"They're smart," Hooper interjected, smiling.

Still, Green understands why it's hard for farmers to shift allegiance. "You're going from one loyalty to a completely different little beast that you can't take seriously," she said with a grin.

"Our hope is that this operation will help farmers take it seriously," Hooper said.

"Open book"

The planning and investment put into Ayers Brook Goat Dairy so far have definitely been serious, starting with securing one of the country's pre-eminent goat dairy farm experts, René DeLeeuw who previously worked for Coach Farm in New York, another leading goat dairy products company.

Vermont Creamery hired DeLeeuw before they even had the farm, Hooper said: "We needed the goat person who was going to do this thing. René is really a goat whisperer. He can walk into a barn and know what the goats need."

Among the goals of Ayers Brook is to refine breeding strategies and develop the most healthy and productive lines of dairy goats. Along with learning about disease management, milking methods and optimal cropping and animal nutrition, the dairy will share everything with other farmers.

"We are maniacal about tracking data from every bale of hay to the composition of the milk," Hooper said, "and we will be an open book."

The open book includes sharing the farm's financial model, "a model that we hope could be duplicated on future goat farms," Hooper said.

The 116-acre farm, a former cow dairy, was actually purchased in 2012 by a partnership of three regional foundations: the High Meadows Fund, the Castanea Foundation and the John Merck Fund. Ayers Brook Goat Dairy, in turn, leases the farm from this partnership until a planned purchase in 2020. It also had to raise $1 million to build farm infrastructure. Vermont Creamery contributed along with four private investors, mostly family foundations with an interest in sustainable agriculture, Hooper said.

In addition to the $1 million raised, Ayers Brook sold a conservation easement on the farm to the Vermont Land Trust for $423,000, which ensures the land will remain in agriculture. Other funding includes a producer loan from one of Vermont Creamery's largest accounts, Whole Foods Market, to finance the milking parlor equipment.

Hooper estimates that the total investment to-date is close to $3 million but clarified that "this investment is not what we would expect a Vermont farmer to make in this kind of operation. We are structuring this enterprise to supply replacement animals to new farms. And we started with nothing, barely a light bulb. We expect that an interested farmer would already have some infrastructure in place."

Full template

From breeding to feeding, Ayers Brook Goat Dairy wants to offer a full template to interested farmers.

In his role at the farm, Miles Hooper is working hard to figure out the best cropping and feed mix for optimal milk quality and production. This includes a very important focus on sourcing and raising feed without genetically modified organisms, which Whole Foods Market will require all suppliers to disclose on their packaging in five years.

"We want farmers to come to us and we'll be able to say: Here's the financial model. Here are the animals. And they can get milking right away," Allison Hooper said. "I would love to see in 10 years, 10 more farms milking 700 goats and getting together regularly to share information, equipment and feed."

With its location near Vermont Technical College, the dairy is also hoping to help educate agriculture students through internships on the farm. They also plan, when staffing allows, to open the farm periodically to educate the general public.

Legitimacy

Louise Calderwood, program director of the Rian Fried Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems at Sterling College and a former regional dairy specialist for University of Vermont Extension, is one agriculture industry veteran who believes Ayers Brook can help create opportunities for the state's farmers.

The new dairy, she said, can play a valuable role sharing insight and expertise "demonstrating the appropriate scale to provide a living in goat dairy farming."

"For cow dairies," Calderwood said, "you only need to drive by your neighbor's farm to get a sense of new techniques, but with goats we don't have that." Of critical importance, she added, is that the well-funded Ayers Brook Goat Dairy, unlike most farms, "can afford to take some risk."

At Oak Knoll Dairy in Windsor, co-owners George Redick and his wife Karen Lindbo milk 400 goats year-round. They have sold milk to Hooper and Reese since 1991 and also process and market their own bottled milk and yogurt. "There wouldn't be a goat industry in Vermont without them," Redick said of Vermont Creamery.

Although he admits he wondered if Hooper and Reese really knew what they were getting into with their own dairy, Redick appreciates their commitment and believes that Ayers Brook will go a long way in educating and informing both the farming and broader communities.

"People come in droves, failed dairy farmers to see what goat farming is about. They think smaller animals are easier to handle. They have the expectation it's going to be profitable right away," Redick said, "but the margins are very small. We do it because we want to do it."

"I think their new farm will bring goodwill to the industry and good public relations and education," he continued. "So many education farms emphasize cow, cow, cow."

"The average farmer, when he thinks about milking goats, he thinks about milking on a wooden stool," Redick said. "They think it's not macho to milk goats. But it really is changing. The dynamic is moving. Something like Ayers Brook, it's legitimizing it."

Contact Melissa Pasanen at mpasanen@aol.com and follow her on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/TasteofVermont

Alison's Chèvre and Smoked Salmon Scones

This tender, savory scone would make a lovely and unusual addition to a spring brunch or Easter Sunday buffet.

Adapted slightly from Chef Alison Lane, Mirabelles, as published in "In a Cheesemaker's Kitchen" by Allison Hooper (2009)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 ounces unsalted butter, preferably Vermont Creamery cultured, cubed

4 ounces plain chèvre (fresh goat cheese), crumbled

3 ounces smoked salmon, finely chopped

3 tablespoons snipped chives

¾ cup half-and-half, cold, plus a few more tablespoons for brushing scones

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter or two forks until butter lumps are the size of peas. Toss in chèvre, salmon and chives just until evenly distributed. Pour in half-and-half and mix just until dough comes together into a rough ball. (Do not overwork or scones may be tough.) On a lightly floured surface, pat dough into a circle or rectangle about one-inch thick and cut about 10 to 12 triangle-shaped scones. Place on a lightly greased or lined baking sheet and brush with a little more half-and-half. Bake for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Makes 10 to 12 scones.