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By Karla Browne, July 10, 2004

Last updated: Friday, July 9, 2004 1:22 PM EDT

Perry County farmer Cathy Soult has visions of making her milk operation more profitable.

But those visions have nothing to do with cattle.

She is focused on goats, and she has definite ideas - for both bulk milk sales and a market on her farm - on what can be done to make local goat operations more lucrative.

The Centre Township resident plans to have a project "up and going" in two years for her 26-animal milking operation.

On a recent weekday afternoon Soult took off from her full-time job at Pennsy Supply in Mt. Holly Springs to take a team of experts on a walk through her goat barn at Wayside Acres, off Route 34.

Two educators - one in agricultural development, another in marketing - and a food industry technical specialist, all Penn State employees, were there, along with a fellow goat milker who formerly worked for Perry Soil Conservation District.

A matter of innovation

One telephone call started the process.

Soult is getting help from the Keystone Agricultural Innovation Center (KAIC), which was started in April at Penn State Extension offices in Cumberland County.

"They have been wonderful," Soult says. "I didn't know where to go to get this started, and they opened the door."

KAIC educator Melissa Piper Nelson, a former farm girl from Bloomsburg, Penn State graduate and former agricultural journalist and author, is working to get Soult a grant and has lined up a grant-writing workshop for her with Middletown-based Larry Grunden, a food industry specialist. He has advice on numerous issues, including installing a new septic system, contacting the state for highway signs for her operation, milk testing and inspections, the need for a separate room for processing milk and zoning rules that would apply to a sales operation on the farm.

Emily Zahn, KAIC educator for community-based agriculture in Cumberland County, has introduced Soult to other producers to learn from their experience and to explore the idea of a cooperative.

Debby Peterman, who has two goats, has been urging Soult to make some money with her operation. In a few years, when her children are older, Peterman would like to do the same.

would like to do the same.

"I don't want to milk unless I have a market," Peterman says.

"A lot of these producers don't have a huge market," says Zahn, a 2001 graduate of Texas A&M University in agricultural development.

Markets may be limited, but producers are many, Nelson says. At least 30 goat milkers in the area are interested in making "artisan" cheeses - small batches of hand-made cheeses with special flavorings or processes, she says.

They find a market

Dotty Travis of Dickinson Township in Cumberland and Candy Walker of Franklin Township, Adams County, are two of those.

With the help of husband David Travis, 54, and son Zachary Travis, 22, Dotty Travis, 52, makes dessert cheeses flavored with lemon or pineapple and savory cheeses with garlic or onion and dill, as well as cheesecakes, goat-milk fudge and "plain chevre with a little bit of sea salt."

Chevre is the name for goat cheese, she explains. It is a spreadable cheese and is less firm than feta, which is also made from goat milk.

The Travis family sells at Carlisle Farmers Market on York Road and sends special orders to Ground for Appeal, a restaurant on West High Street in Carlisle, and Yellow Canary, a Gettysburg gourmet shop next door to Blue Parrot restaurant.

But "the majority of our sales are right at the house" to individuals, Dotty Travis says.

Preserving that farmer-to-consumer face-to-face relationship is the Travises' goal as they expand their business.

Walker, 48, who also sells most of her products from the farm, has the same sentiment.

"We enjoy the direct contact between the consumer and the farmers. That's important - the person-to-person contact," she says.

Customers can understand more about the product and can see how the animals are raised and handled. And the farmer has the reward of seeing infants who could not tolerate cow milk start to thrive on goat milk, Walker says.

"Another fun part of goat farming here is buying feed from local people, which helps other farmers out. It creates a circle here of hay, grain; then we sell the milk."

Mixed reactions

The idea of a cooperative to sell milk in bulk does not appeal to Walker - "not at this time, for sure," she says.

But Travis says the kind of ideas coming from KAIC should go "from their lips to God's ears."

Among the most difficult aspects of farming is having time to pursue marketing, she says.

"You're into physically taking care of the goats. Then to try to get into the house, get cleaned up, dressed up and meet with someone, and go out 10 times to have one contact that would pay off ...

"I dropped off cheese samples at New Cumberland - never heard back. It's time-consuming if you don't have time to waste."

A cooperative could mean more than just bulk milk sales, she adds.

"Probably what we would be after is a cooperative of people marketing their own products," she says.

A group of artisan cheesemakers could pool money and manpower for a booth at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, Travis says. "A cooperative of 10 people or more to share the fee, that's the kind of help I'm looking for - help manning the stand."

Pooling funds for advertising is another cooperative venture she would like to see.

Time on their side

Upper Frankford Township part-time goat farmer Derrick Carpenter can see himself joining a cooperative at some point, but not in the near future.

A reproduction manager for a heifer herd at Dream Farms in Newburg, Carpenter says self-employment "definitely is the ultimate goal of mine."

Expanding his 17-doe milking herd is "a matter of room and finances," he says.

At age 23, Carpenter and his wife, Dessie Carpenter, have plenty of time to work toward a bigger operation.

This year they plan to decrease the size of the herd. At 60 does, kids and bucks, it is the largest they have ever had in their two-and-a-half years of shared farming.

"If you want to get more, it's not hard to get it back up. We went from 23 to 40 babies" from last spring to this spring, Dessie Carpenter says.

Milking fewer animals will allow more time to make the goat-milk lotions and soaps they sell by mail order and at one Newburg store, Jody's Hideaway.

Lotions and soaps, tough they are made without added water, take small quantities of milk, Derrick Carpenter says. "We don't need to keep a lot of milkers at this point."

But "I could see us doing both (bulk milk production and manufacturing of soaps and lotions) if we had a profitable way to market our product."

Dessie Carpenter is working on setting up a website to increase sales, but meanwhile she is keeping her job as a graphic artist at The Sentinel.

Decreasing the size of the herd also would allow more time for marketing. The business has been static only because of the lack of time to develop sales, Derrick Carpenter says.

Licensing, inspections

Expanding to bulk milk production also would require licensing and inspections that the operation does not currently need, he adds.

For now, the couple are content to feed the extra milk to calves they wean for other farmers.

They also keep five Suffolk sheep.

"We're both involved in Cumberland County 4-H," Derrick Carpenter says. "We'd like to be able to sell kids and lambs as market project animals for 4-H kids. "That would be our main area of interest at this point."

Who to contact...

Farmers in five area counties can get help developing cooperatives and building markets for value-added products through Keystone Agricultural Innovation Center, housed in the Penn State Extension offices, 1100 Claremont Road, Middlesex Township.

"If it's adding value to a product, then we're here to help. But straight marketing of a product - probably not," says Melissa Piper Nelson, business and marketing agricultural development extension educator.

"If someone just wants to find a better supplier for their milk, it would not come under our bailiwick. But if they wanted to take that milk and make cheese, that comes under our program."

The Innovation Center, which opened in April, also has a broader purpose. "Part of our role will be to be a voice for agriculture within the community," Nelson says.

Nelson and community-based agricultural development extension educator Emily Zahn are joining forces.

"All the decisions that are made in development in the community, economic growth in the community - we are hoping to interject into those discussions the relevance of agriculture in the communities," Nelson says.

A matter of diversity

From helping goat milkers to produce and develop markets for cheese to guiding ridgetop farmers in finding wind energy contacts, activity has been "very diverse, very diverse," Nelson says with a laugh.

Farmers have asked advice on switching dairy operations from traditional to organic production. People have wanted information on alternative crops, including ginseng. Others have bought land and want to farm as a hobby but don't know how.

The Innovation Center also can help with making jam and jelly from a family recipe for sale at a farmer's market, for instance, she says.

A workshop on writing a business plan, "Tilling the Soil of Opportunity," is scheduled for Sept. 11 in Adams County Cooperative Extension office.

For more information, call Melissa Piper Nelson or Emily Zahn at 240-6500 or 1-800-709-5242. E-mail Nelson at mpn3@psu.edu or Zahn at enz@psu.edu.

Goat show set

The national show of the American Dairy Goat Association is set for July 10-17 at the Farm Show Complex on Cameron Street in Harrisburg.

"There will be the most goats you've ever seen in one place - thousands of goats," says Perry County goat milker Ed Fach.

Show chairwoman is Helen Snyder of Newport. For more information, call 567-3554 or e-mail starfirenubians@pa.net.

On the Net:

www.adga.org