Why a goat dairy? After considering a children's bookstore, an Inn and a restaurant, we visited a goat dairy because we loved goat cheese. We fell in love with the animals. A farmstead goat dairy where we raised goats and made cheese suited my interest in food as well as my desire to do physical work and be with animals. A goat dairy seemed to not only meet our lifestyle criteria; it was also appealing because it was a unique enterprise. How did we get started? We bought books, attended goat shows, and talked to many people. We found a consultant from Wisconsin who helped us have the confidence to move forward with very little experience. We made friends with Joan Bowen, a veterinarian who was a goat expert and generous with her advice and support. We started with five goats, which grew to 25 very quickly when we exercised an opportunity to buy an entire healthy herd at a bargain price. We began immediately making plans for building barns, and designing a farmstead dairy where we would raise the goats and make the cheese. Just as all our plans were coming to fruition Arlene died of ovarian cancer.

A new beginning? I had to decide whether to stay with the project or find some other way to make a living. I knew I didn't want to go ahead by myself. When my oldest daughter Gretchen decided to leave her job as a restaurant manager in Massachusetts and join the dairy as my business partner I decided to move ahead. In that first year we learned a lot about goats, a lot about cheese and a lot about being father and daughter. In March 1992, Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy made its first batch of fresh chèvre from the milk of 25 Nubian goats. We had learned about goats, we had learned about cheese, now we had to learn how to sell cheese. I suppose we expected that once we made tasty cheese the public would just line up at our door. They didn't. It took Gretchen's enthusiastic sales style to put Haystack Goat Cheese in stores and restaurants all over the Front Range of Colorado.