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one teenager plus eight kids begets a goat dairy BY TARA AUSTEN WEAVER Like many parents, Vicky and Tom Brown worried about their daughter as she headed into the teen years. Their main concern: boys. Their solution to the problem, however, might surprise you. They got her a goat. “We were really just trying to distract her,” says Vicky. The animal was a Future Farmers of America project, housed at a farm near their home in San Diego. Every day after work Vicky took her daughter Christine to the farm, and waited while she did her goat chores. “I was working as a CFO at the time and I would show up in my Nordstrom clothes,” Vicky laughs. The animal did prove a distraction—more for Vicky than Christine. The woman who owned the farm kept trying to give Vicky baby goats to hold, but she was immune to their charms. “Any furry animal is adorable,” she says. It was the momma goats that drew her in, she just liked being around them. “I used to go in there all wound up tight from my job and they were just soothing and relaxing.” Soon she was hooked. The Browns knew they couldn’t afford the land they needed in Southern California. Tom had grown up on Whidbey Island and suggested they look in that area. Two years later, in 2006, they moved north, with eight Nubian goats in tow. “It felt like coming home,” Vicky says. What wasn’t easy was getting the permits required to open their dairy. “Other people have tried to open micro-dairies on Whidbey and they were stonewalled,” she says. Even though Whidbey was once home to 21 dairies—the last closed in 2007—there was no precedent for the small scale Vicky was imagining, and the laws were in flux. “They’re accustomed to the Darigold plan,” she explains. The county, however, didn’t know what Vicky’s husband Tom learned long ago: she is a determined woman. “I don’t understand the word ‘no’ very well,” she admits. It took four years for the Brown’s plans to be approved. For much of that time Vicky was driving to the planning department every two weeks to press her case. “I tried on the phone first,” she says, “but that didn’t get me anywhere.” After four years of persistence, the permits were issued and Vicky and Tom could move forward. But that time had cost them money. Vicky’s business plan hadn’t anticipated four years of delays. They started making cheese under the Little Brown Farm label in 2010. Vicky had learned from the woman who ran the goat farm in San Diego. It was a revelation to her. “To me cheese was something you bought at the store. I didn’t realize you could make at home.” Like with the goats, she was quickly hooked. “I love everything about cheese making,” she says, “handling the milk, watching it change, tasting it.” She had disliked chemistry and science in high school—“but cheese-making is all chemistry, and goat-raising is all biology, and this is my life now.” It was a far cry from her days as a CFO in the technology sector. Vicky offered a selection of cheeses, from fresh chevre to a mozzarella-style she calls Caprizella; there’s an unbrined feta variation, a sharp, aged cheese similar to Parmesan, and Velvet Rose, a wine-washed rind cheese that sells out in two days. Word soon got around about a new cheesemaker on the island. “We got into some restaurants and specialty shops right from the beginning,” says Vicky. Bayleaf in Copeville and the 2nd Street Wine Shop started carrying her wares. “People were very supportive,” she says. All those years of waiting had helped develop a community for the farm. It was Bayleaf where Eli Dahlin, chef de cuisine at Ballard’s The Walrus and the Carpenter, first stumbled on the cheese. He tracked down Vicky, calling her from his car as he drove down the island. He wanted to put her cheese on the menu, but Vicky said no. “I couldn’t take the time to deliver into Seattle,” she explains. “It would cost me too much.” Vicky said the same to her friend, Georgie Smith of Willowood Farm, who told her to look up the restaurant on the internet. Vicky had no idea her cheese had been requested by one of the top new restaurants in America, lauded by food magazines and newspapers alike. Georgie offered to take the cheese in when she made Seattle deliveries. Little Brown Farm now appears on the menus at Walrus and the Carpenter, Boat Street Café and The Whale Wins. Even with a high-profile restaurant client, establishing a dairy is no smooth path. Vicky and Tom built a cheese cave and farm store in 2012, with help from funds raised through Kickstarter. This space allows them to teach classes in cheesemaking, ideally bringing in some extra income. They are still trying to pay off debt incurred from the long wait for permits. Vicky offers small classes where everyone gets to make their own batch of cheese—“So they really know what to do when they go home.” But that has been a challenge as well. “I love teaching,” she says, “but the time people really want to take classes is the summer, when we’re at our busiest and I can’t take time off to teach.” But the busy summer is a glorious time on the farm. Once the new kid goats are old enough, Vicky and Tom open up the farm each day at feeding time, inviting neighbors, visitors and school groups to bottle-feed the baby goats. “That’s the most important thing we do,” says Vicky—“making that connection. You see pretty pictures of farms, but the reality of a working dairy is really different. We want people to understand that.” She tells of families who come every day, all summer long, who start reading food labels and paying more attention to food ingredients. “We don’t preach,” she clarifies. “You really can’t teach anyone anything until they are ready to learn it.” But baby goats make for a compelling example. Vicky is realistic about what she’s trying to do. “Small farms are like restaurants, not all of them make it beyond five years.” Though Vicky works more than full time on the farm, Tom has continued his job as a software engineer. Sometimes he can work remotely, but sometimes he has to travel for work, leaving her without his help. “It’s way more than anyone could or should do on their own,” she says. She’s still trying new things, trying to hit the right mix. Farmers’ markets proved not a good match. “We did five markets and it required too much staff.” She continues to do the Mercer Island Farmers’ Market, which she calls her emotional recharge (“The customers there are so gracious”) and the Bayview Market on Whidbey. She sells at the Little Brown farm store, and she and daughter Christine worked together on a pop-up shop for the holiday season called Handcrafted on Whidbey. Vicky has also branched out into other products—Cajeta, a traditional Mexican caramel sauce made from goat’s milk, Dulce de Leche, made from cow’s milk sourced from a nearby farm, and special occasion batches of toffee (“The toffee has to be a controlled substance,” she says). Her butter, which is on the menu at The Walrus and the Carpenter, is flecked with Whidbey Island Sea Salt. “It’s criminally good,” she says with a laugh. She’s also making difficult choices. “We now sell some of our goats for meat and that’s been hard…I’m not good at culling my heard.” Last fall Vicky sold a third of her animals, because she couldn’t afford to feed them through the winter. “In order for the farm to survive, we have to make hard decisions,” she says. But the joy of raising goats hasn’t changed. Vicky knows all her animals by name, and they respond when she calls. “You have to know their behavior so you know if they’re off,” she says. “When you’re buying milk or cheese from a local farm, you’ve buying from someone who has spent day and nights with their animals, taking care of them.” Little Brown Farm isn’t yet where she wants it to be, but Vicky is determined. “I’m a huge fan of authenticity,” she says. “This is a working farm. If it can’t be done through hard work, then I don’t want to do it.” Tara Austen Weaver is author of The Butcher & The Vegetarian, Tales from High Mountain, and Orchard House (forthcoming). She’s also a sucker for baby goats. |
