Description

All of our goats are raised on grass only and are born on our farm.  

Why Would I Eat Goat?

That is the question isn’t it?  Goat is the most consumed meat in the world, but for some reason we shy away from it as Americans?  Why is that?

I can tell you that until I was raising my own goats I had never tasted it, unless it was in a taco and I didn’t know.  I suffered from the same stigma that so many of us do.

So, if I would have refused to eat goat, why in the world did we start raising them?

When we first bought our farm in 2011 the only thing on the entire 25 acres was a house.  The irrigation was not set up, and the farm had not been irrigated in at least a decade.  There were no fences, no corrals and no structures for the animals.  It was obvious that it was going to take some time before this piece of property was a workable farm.

During this interim period Autumm and Hattie thought it would be fun to have a goat or two as pets on the place.  We had plenty of weeds to feed them, and of course they are cute.  At the same time there were a lot of foreclosures going on in the Boise real estate market.  Many people with small acreages had goats but were losing their properties.  So, what were they to do with their goats?

Autumm looked on Craigslist and saw that a gentleman from Boise who was losing his home had two goats that he wanted to give away to a good home.  We figured that we had the perfect home since we had 25 acres of weeds for them to eat and a shaded creek for them to relax by.

I drove to the man’s house and met our first two goats: Lars and James.  If those names sound familiar it is because he named his two goats after Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield of the epic heavy metal band, Metallica.  These two old bachelors were both wethers.  A wether is a castrated male goat.  They were far too old to be butchered, and I would not have wanted to butcher them anyway because I promised to take care of them.

James and Lars got off to a great start at our farm with a makeshift pen to house them at night.  However, Lars unfortunately suffered an untimely death from a swarm of yellow jackets of all things.  He was bitten so many times that his blood thinned to the point that he died.  My first lesson on the delicateness of goats was learned.

James and Lars were both Pygmy goats, which are basically a miniature goat that produces good meat for its size.  So, we decided to replace Lars with another pygmy to keep James company.  Autumm set out to find James’ new companion, and she came across Olive.

Olive was a kid (yes, baby goats are called kids) at the time, and she is a doe or female goat.  James hated her.  Picture a 10 year old kid with a lot of energy being asked to entertain an 80 year old curmudgeon of a grandfather.  That was the pairing that we had created.

We were naturally excited about the purchase of our new farm, and we were talking with all of our friends about the place and having them out to see the farm.  One thing led to another, and word spread.  Pretty soon our friends who owned goats started giving us theirs – just giving them to us!  We found ourselves in the goat business.

I can remember the day that I decided that if I was going to be in the goat business, I had better eat some goat.  So, I butchered a goat, processed the meat and ate it.  Not bad!

Everyone describes the taste of goat differently.  When I am asked I say that it tastes like a combination of beef, elk and deer.  The meat has the rich red color like elk meat does, but it doesn’t have as strong of a flavor.  I don’t taste a gamey flavor in the goat, but it has tinges of the flavor I really like in venison.  And when salted and cooked correctly it offers some of the same visceral satisfaction of a great steak.