Brad Kessler’s book isn’t a how-to manual on raising dairy goats, rather it’s a meditation upon a life lived alongside these noble yet much maligned creatures (i.e. goats do not chew on cans). Mr. Kessler brings the reader on a journey which begins in Manhattan and ends on a sprawling farm in rural Vermont:
“This is the story of our first years with dairy goats. A story about what it’s like to live with animals who directly feed you. I tell of cheese and culture and agriculture, but also of the rediscovery of a pastoral life. Rediscovery because the longer I lived with goats the more connections I saw to a collective human past we’ve since forgotten, her in North America at least.”
Kessler’s book touches on all aspects of goatherding, even a short history of the interaction between people and goats around the world and through the ages. He brings us along as his first goat is serviced by a buck–an experience more rattling for Kessler and his wife than for the doe! He describes the first kids born on the farm and then the battle to extract milk from the udders. Cheese is finally made and along the way we learn much more than the day-in, day-out routines of the farm but learn something of ourselves as well.
Kessler’s writing is lyrical and many times poetic and it wouldn’t surprise me if, like Kessler, upon seeing what was to become his farm, some of you become just as sure as he did that goats might have a place in your lives too:
“We drove there late one October afternoon when the trees had shed their leaves. The valley looked promising; narrow and forested with folded hills. An opalescent river tumbled aside the road. The pavement turned to gravel, then we jostled up a rocky drive and the house swung into view: bone white clapboards, mountains all around. We both knew right away.”
