The Authors of It All

A Saanen billy tries to get Phoebe to come a little closer. Don't do it, Phoebe!

Quite a strong odor emanated from the billy goats, who were penned separately at some distance from the dairy building. The beard in a billy goat is a potent scent distribution system. He puts various umm... fluids on his beard, and anoints his back and chest with it. I'm told that some French cheesemakers use the billy's beard to swipe through their cheeses for extra authentic flavor. I hope it isn't true. It certainly isn't true of Pipe Dreams Fromage.

The goats at Pipe Dreams Farm are all Swiss Saanan goats, named for the valley in Switzerland where they originated. They're big, tall, usually white animals, and they're the champs for milk production: the Holsteins of the goat clan. An Australian Saanan doe produced 7,714 pounds of milk in a single year. Their milk is sweet and odorless. Goat milk is more easily digested than cow's milk, because the fat globules are smaller and more easily dispersed. It's good for babies, small children, the elderly, and anyone with allergies to cow's milk, or a compromised immune system. But mostly, it's really, really good for cheese.

Brad told me that Saanens come in white, and that the brown ones used to be culled. Now, though, they're calling brown Saanens "Sables" and actually selecting for color. It's silly, when all that really matters is their sweet temperament and great milk production. I just couldn't believe what nice animals these goats were. They seemed so happy to see us, as friendly as dogs, but with a delightful, gentle reserve. Good thing. You wouldn't want a goat jumping up on you.

This billy is a sable Saanen. Here's another sable Saanen in the lower right corner of the picture:
This is a group of kids that squeeze under the fence and lead little goat parades around the farm, free of confinement. Goats will go out of their way to climb on strange, treacherous, high, odd things, and they're great fun to watch. Games of King of the Mountain spontaneously begin and end. In stark contrast to horses, they don't hurt themselves very often. You could never allow horses to mess around things like this.

I can attest that both billies were very sweet, and did not pee on me. Brad said this was probably because it's not breeding season now. He said they will try to pee on you if they succeed in luring you close enough. Nice. And I thought spitting llamas were a drag.Do I look like someone who would pee on a person? Don't believe the bad press Farmer Brad hands out. I wish I could get my horns through this fence so I could whisper in your ear.


I love this big nanny goat with UglyDolls on her black coat. Goats and weathered barns, ahhh ahhh ahhh.

Goat #43

Playing King of the Mountain on a pile of coolers. Goats love to get up on things.Goat #43 is, I believe, the highly personable creative genius behind the small band of jailbreakers who roam Pipe Dreams Farm, slipping under the fences and getting into all kinds of goaty mischief. Although just a kid, #43 is smart and sassy and very, very sweet.
She kept approaching me, just wanting attention. Her horns were startlingly warm in the chill winter air, a detail I always forget about until I'm around goats. I guess there's blood supply in horns, because they bleed if they're broken or cut.

It wasn't long before I got down to #43's level and gave her some proper lovin', including nose kisses.photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson
I could really get into keeping goats, if I could figure out a way that it was compatible with traveling oh, nearly constantly. Maybe I could be a nomad, and drive my goats up the jetway with a stick, just take them along. It's a thought. I'll have to check the regulations.photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson

A goat, I think, is much like a dog, except that it gives useful milk.

In the Milking Parlor

On our way back through Pennsylvania, we stopped to visit old friends in Greencastle. Sometimes you hear people talk about starting a goat farm. Brad and Jenny really did it, about 16 years ago.
Pipe Dreams Farm is an unpreposessing looking place. It's not hi-tech, nor is it shiny and new. It's comfortable and alive and friendly and interesting. Seventy-five animals live here quite happily. Brad takes the flock on walks through the surrounding woods to vary their lives, and their diet. They follow him because they know and trust him.

I adore this little dairy, which is the only new building on the farm. Bill and I and some music friends from Baltimore played a housewarming gig there the year it was built, 1991, if I'm not mistaken.It was designed by Jenny, who is an architect. Our friend Richard, also an architect, helped to build it. Richard designed our tower.

photo by James R. Hill III


Brad and Jenny's son Sam leads Liam up the ramp to the milking parlor. I love the eagerness on Sam's face, and the utter trepidation on Liam's. He's never pretended to be a goat before, but he's game. When he enters the milking parlor and the pungent scent of goat hits him, he staggers a bit but keeps true to the game. Since Liam has a supremely sensitive nose, I was very proud of my boy.
They're pretending to be goats, making horns. Brad swats them with a stick to keep them moving.
Once inside the milking parlor, the goats stand on an elevated concrete catwalk.
Brad tethers Dairy Goat Liam to the bar with a chain, and he sets to his feed.
The feed is a coarse sweet feed, with whole grains and roasted soybean meal. Roasted soybeans get the protein farther down the digestive tract to the abomasum, the fourth and last chamber of the stomach, also known as the "true" or "glandular stomach." This helps boost milk production. Goats don't like roasted soybeans, though (it was a revelation to me that there is anything goats don't like, since I watched them gnawing on my clothes and some poison ivy vines outside) so the feed producers add molasses and other flavor enhancers to the feed to get them to eat it.The goats eat happily while they're hooked up to the milking machines. Six can be milked at once in the parlor. When they're done, they exit via a small door at the top of the ramp, and another shift comes in to be milked.
In high milking season, the milk runs through a pipe into the next room, into a big stainless steel cooling tank, where a paddle stirs it. This is the pipe that shunts it into the tank. There are filters in the pipe to keep any dirt from getting in the milk.
This time of year, though, when they're just about to dry up, the 40 or so goats still producing aren't giving enough milk to get deep enough for the cooling tank paddle to reach it, so the milk runs into clean 5-gallon joint compound buckets in the cooling room. Here are Brad's notes to his two employees:
They include a note about one goat's bloody teat, something that needs to be attended to. Each animal is numbered, though I suspect they also get names.
More about the personalities of goats in my next post.

This Christmas, my siblings all got mysterious Styrofoam coolers stuffed full of fresh Pipe Dreams Farm goat cheese for Christmas. I know my three sisters, like me, are nuts for it. Haven't heard yet from my brother...Goat cheese is something you either love or you don't love, like cilantro. You have to feel sorry for people who don't love it.