Getting your hands dairy with goats
Cheesemaking classes, yoga, walks in fresh air on offer at goat farm
About one hour east of Toronto there’s a farm where folks can really get their hands dirty, well, dairy, actually.
Set on 80 hectares of rolling Northumberlan d County countryside, Haute Goat coowners Debbie Nightingale and Shain Jaffe have been steadily creating a unique property since they purchased the farm in 2015.
Just outside of Port Hope, Ont., the couple welcomes visitors for self-guided walks or for several popular experiences, including goat yoga, goat shmurgles — hugging and snuggling goats — walks with alpaca and wandering trails through a shiitake forest. There’s also a restaurant, The Screaming Goat, serving farm-to-table lunches and selling the farm’s divine goat fudge, caramel corn and other goat goodies.
Events and experiences have ticket prices, but visits to explore and see the animals are by donation or pay what you can.
One of the most popular classes at Haute Goat is called “Milk a Goat, Make Goat Cheese,” in which for about $100, students learn how to milk a goat, then venture into the kitchen to make a batch of warm, fresh goat cheese. It’s a back-to-theland, hands-on experience, in fresh air and sunshine.
“People have always come here for a dose of country fresh air, to engage with the animals and some quiet in a beautiful surrounding,” says Nightingale. “I would say there has been a big uptick in the numbers of people from Toronto for sure; they so appreciate having somewhere they feel safe and can relax … it’s kind of freeing.”
J’Neene and Dan Coghlan had not gone anywhere since lockdown began and the Picton, Ont., couple, who travelled widely pre-pandemic, decided to take a long overdue staycation. “We always take cooking classes wherever we travel to,” says J’Neene, “and so because we can’t travel out of the country, we thought, why not take a cooking class staycation right here in Ontario?”
A group of kids were also excited about milking a goat and making cheese; in fact the class of 12 was almost evenly divided between older adults, young adults and kids. Tween cousins Andrea, Isabela and Sofia were naturals; their cheese curdled the best. And while the Coghlans were able to keep the experience going at home by cooking with their cheese, the cousins were planning to eat their gooey goat mozzarella in the car on the trip home to the GTA.
Nightingale and Jaffe have offered the approximately threehour sessions for three years. “Someone asked me how to milk,” says Nightingale, “and that’s how it started.”
That first year, Nightingale had planned to hold four classes, but the demand was so great she ended up doing 20. The demand hasn’t let up and she has had to add a few sessions later into the fall: Sunday to Nov. 1 will bring the last classes of 2020, but they will resume in spring 2021if all goes as planned.
On this day, Butterscotch and Scout, two of their 45-head herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats, hopped eagerly onto their milking stands — they know a special treat awaits in the bowl — and several budding goatherds tried their hands at milking.
Nigerian goats are small, friendly, with nice sized udders and good milk production. Also, says Nightingale, “they have blue eyes, they’re impossibly cute and have the highest butterfat content of all the goat breeds, often between six per cent and 10 per cent.
“I started with four and now have 45,” she added. “We figure over the years, we’ve birthed more than 250 babies, most of whom go either to people who want to start a small herd, people who want pets — they tend to buy the neutered males — and people who are coming back for more because they’ve fallen in love with the breed.”
It’s not as easy as practised milkers, such as Nightingale, make it look.
Each approximately 40pound goat can give up to one litre of milk each day but, for many students, much squeezing and a little errant tugging produced only dribbles; enough to lighten a cup of coffee, perhaps.
For the cooking classes, Nightingale uses goat milk from Cross Wind Farm in Keene, Ont. Haute Goat isn’t a registered dairy, so it can’t use its own goats’ milk for public consumption, but Cross Wind is and its milk is small-batch pasteurized and not homogenized, so it’s ideal for cheese-making.
Here’s a recipe for the freshest goat cheese you’ll ever eat, courtesy of Nightingale. She says to use low-temperature pasteurized goat (or cow) milk; it’s very important to the curdling process. Rennet and other cheese-making supplies are available through online retailers and at farm supply stores. You will need a thermometer for this.