Well when I had kids (the human kind) I went the quasi-holistic approach. Ground my own baby food, scraped off the lead paint, researched stevia in preference to refined sugar, that sort of stuff. When I say quasi I mean I still like Moon Pies (especially the artificial banana ones—-what is that flavor anyway?) and an occasional good bourbon, or even a mediocre one. Oh, let’s face, it a cheap bourbon if that’s all that’s available.

Then I heard about the growth hormones that were okayed by the FDA for the dairy cows to up their milk production. I figured I didn’t need my children being the generational-study on the effects of growth hormones in the milk they drank, so I decided to milk something on our farm. Dairy cows need too much pasture land which we don’t have, but goats are more browsers than grazers and our bramble was perfect for that. I had the time. I had the desire. I was sure I had the ability. We had the land. Hence, the decision to get a dairy goat. Enter “Bubbly” our first Oberhasli dairy goat.

Most, not all, dairy goats are Alpine derivations. Oberhasli’s are from the area of the Alps over (Ober) the village Hasli. Complex, huh? All Heidi & Shirley Temple and stuff. Bubbly was a good old goat, but just like horse-trading, or used-car salesmen, they saw me coming. I bought a goat with one side of her udder (two teats not four like a cow) scarred down and the other side with limited milk production which later had to be removed because of mastitis from an earlier infection (unbeknownst to me) from a dog attack and puncture wound to her udder! So we actually had a dairy goat with a double mastectomy. When I brought her home I checked her teeth (not before I bought her, mind you). I know about checking horses teeth, so I figured it had to be a similar process and litmus paper test to check out for the purchasing of a stellar goat. Well I discovered Bubbly had no upper teeth. I was so embarrassed that I’d bought a dentally-challenged goat (didn’t know about the faulty udder yet) that I shut Bubbly’s mouth and she and I swore we would mention it to no one……..ever. But I was firmly ensconced as a goat owner now.

Bubbly was bred, we had babies, we bottle fed babies (because she had no milk supply of her own) and we ultimately ended up with more dairy goats and goat milk than you could imagine…..eventually. We had milk, we made cheese, we made soap, we had goat meat, we had pelts for rugs. Yup, we were (and still are) into dairy goats! No Posilac hormones for my children though. I remain a staunch banana Moon-Pie-eating health-nut.

Oh and by the way, goats don’t have upper teeth, Bubbly was dentally perfect. Since then we’ve expanded to Saanen’s (a municipality in Switzerland) and Toggenburg’s (another Alp area), both types of dairy goats. The one consistency between goat breeds is the smell of the bucks……….noteworthy. But my children and all of their friends were raised on goat milk. Most of the friends were unaware they were drinking goat milk, eating pudding from goat milk, or floating their cereal in it. We found if you let the goats eat weeds and things, their milk has that (as one of my friend’s put it) “wang” to it. We found that if we fed alfalfa to whoever was in milk that their milk tasted remarkably like store bought 2%…………….except for the Toggenburg’s. Theirs always has a permanent “wang” to it. So we keep their milk for the stronger cheeses. No one notices and it’s a win-win situation. …..So, it all started with Bubbly.