- Inga Witscher: Let's go boss, good boss.
Come on, girls.
Go boss, go boss, go boss, go boss, go boss.
Come on, girls.
Welcome to the farm!
You know I love my dairy cows.
I've been farming my whole life and I just love cows.
But I wanted to explore some different animals
so today, I've decided to visit with some goat farms.
First, I'm gonna be heading out
to a farmstead goat creamery
to learn about goat milk cheese
and then, I'm gonna see
how goats can restore native prairie
and finally, I'm gonna learn about goat milk soap.
Gather with us, Around the Farm Table .
I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
Good morning, girls.
I'm Inga and I love everything about farming.
Midwestern farms are
a bounty of good food made by good people.
I love being able to travel
to search out good ingredients.
Cooking is all about what's seasonal, what's fresh.
Every day can be filled with good food,
good friends, and a beautiful herd of cows.
Welcome to the farm!
[affectionately to cow] Good girl!
- Around the Farm Table
is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
united to grow family agriculture,
Heartland Credit Union,
Focus Funds for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
[birds chirping, peaceful music]
- When I start to put the cows
back out on pasture after a long winter,
I know it's time to start harvesting nettles.
Nettles are an amazing wild food.
They're so abundant here on my farm,
and I'm sure probably in your own backyard too.
They're delicious to eat
and they're extremely healthy for you.
So, nettles, you might also know them as "burning weed."
I think that's what people call them in the Midwest.
They're a stinging nettle, so they will sting you
if you just grab them without any gloves on.
You might be saying, "Well, why in the heck
"would you want to eat these weeds?"
Because they're delicious, they're full of iron,
they're full of minerals.
They're really, really good for you
and it's one of the first nice greens of the year.
So, we use them in everything.
We use them in soups, we use them in egg dishes, saut?s.
Today, I'm gonna be making a nettle cake,
and before you think that is the craziest idea, just wait.
It tastes delicious.
So, when I'm harvesting my nettles,
I harvest the top leaves.
Those are the tastiest, the most tender leaves.
As the summer progresses,
the nettles will get a little bit hairier and more fibrous
and then I stop using them
because I'm kind of nettled out by that time.
Nettles, to me, are like tomatoes,
I wanna eat enough tomatoes in August and September
that I'm so sick of eating fresh tomatoes,
I don't wanna eat them again 'til the following summer
when they're delicious again.
But I really encourage you to eat them
because, well heck, they're free,
they're everywhere, they're abundant,
and it's kind of fun.
When we get this bag to the kitchen,
I'm just gonna do a nice...
I'll throw these either in boiling water
or just rinse them with hot water
and that takes the sting out of them.
Well, I'm gonna put these back in the kitchen
and then we're gonna go on a little goat adventure.
[folksy music]
For my first stop, I traveled to Cross Plains
to the Dreamfarm to meet with Diana,
a goat farmer
and cheese maker.
- Hi, Diana. - Hi, Inga.
- Nice to see you. - Good to see you.
Welcome to Dreamfarm. - Thank you.
I'd love to check out the goats.
- Diana: They'd love to greet you.
- Inga: Dreamfarm is nestled on 25 acres of rolling hills
which provide perfect pastures
for a herd of playful dairy goats.
Oooh, hi, hi.
Diana milks her goats daily,
and she uses that milk to produce a variety
of artisanal hand-crafted goat cheeses
and she sells those cheeses to local stores and restaurants.
This is so fun to be out here with the goats
and just to be on the farm here.
They're so sweet.
- Goats have great personalities, they love people.
- They really do, and as I was walking up,
I saw them kind of just playing together
and you can't help but smile being around these.
- Diana: Most times, they make you smile.
- How did you find yourself
getting into the cheese business
and getting into being a goat farmer?
- Well, it's a long story but the short of the story is,
we were living in a rural setting
and we got some goats for our kids
and bred the goats, had milk,
and had extra milk so decided to make cheese,
and I was sharing it with the farm where I was working at,
at the time, that had a CSA
they asked me if I'd be interested in providing cheese
along with their vegetable selections
and I thought, that'd be a great opportunity.
- Can you explain what farmstead cheese is
for people that don't know?
- Diana: Farmstead cheese is made from the milk
produced only on your farm.
We don't purchase any outside milk.
- Inga: So, you're doing the milking,
you're doing the feeding, the taking care of the goats
and you're also doing the cheese making too?
- Diana: Right.
- I like that system because I think it allows you to be
a little bit more intimate with that cheese
and the cheese is gonna be
a little bit different each time, right?
Depending on what the goats are eating?
- And the seasons,
and the stage of lactation that they're in.
- Okay, goats have a little bit more butterfat,
is that right? Than dairy cows?
- It depends on the breed.
- Oh, okay, just like cows. - Just like cow breeds.
The Jersey has higher butterfat versus Holsteins,
the Nubians have more butterfat than the Alpines
so that's why I choose to do a mix of Alpine and Nubians.
- Okay, what is it about farming and cheese making
that really just, that inspires you, keeps you going?
- Diana: I think to wake up every morning
and just step outside into the beautiful environment
that you have to work with
and then being greeted by these animals.
I can't imagine a morning not being shared with the animals.
- Inga: For sure.
- And then, just having that opportunity to provide food
for other people is really a humbling experience.
- That's really beautiful.
Well, I am so excited to see your creamery
if that's possible
and just spend a little bit more time here
with these beautiful goats.
- I'd love to show you.
[light peaceful music]
- There's so many different varieties of cheeses
that you can make.
Can you explain to me what this variety is
and how you make it?
What's the process?
- This is called a fresh ch?vre, or a fresh goat cheese.
So, it actually started yesterday,
we brought the milk up from the milk house
in our boat cooler,
brought it up in buckets, dumped it into this facility,
which is a vat pasteurizer.
- Okay.
- So, because it's a fresh cheese it has to be pasteurized.
We got through the pasteurization
and then we add a little bit of starter culture
to get some good bacteria
breaking down that lactic acid in the milk.
And then add a little bit of rennet,
and then it's set in here overnight.
And this morning, lift up the lid
and you've got this nice vat of soft curd.
And I take that curd and scoop it out with this ladle
into these cloth lined baskets
and it'll drain here until tomorrow morning.
Then we'll take it out of the cheese cloths.
It'll have a consistency of
like a cream cheese texture.
We'll put it into bowls, add salt, add herbs
and then package it into individual containers,
ready for sale.
- This has been so inspiring to learn about all this
and to be here and to see that it can actually happen
for me to have a small creamery as well,
so thank you for spending the time with me.
- You're welcome, thank you for your interest.
- Well let's head on down the road
and check out some more goats.
[light peaceful music]
After meeting with Diana and her dairy goats,
I took a ride up a steep ridge with Jesse.
Jesse and Jay are a husband and wife team of ecologists
who manage several herds of goats.
- Come on goats, let's see some goats.
- Inga: They put their goats to work,
clearing brush and controlling invasive species
as they preserve and rehabilitate natural areas.
[goat bleats]
This is so spectacular to see these views
and be up on this ridge.
Can you tell folks where exactly we are?
- Yeah, this the Hogback State Natural Area.
We're in Central Crawford County
which is the heart of the Driftless Area.
We're actually on a ridge
which used to be part of the Kickapoo River Valley
but tens of thousands of years ago,
the river cut through the bluff
about a mile to the south of us
and left this part of the river valley dry
so we have this spectacular view
of this huge river valley with no river in it.
The Hogback itself is one of the finest examples
of dry prairie left in the state.
- Ingrid: So, what I'm looking at here,
this is all native to Wisconsin?
All these plants.
- It's a mixture of the native prairie plants
that have been here for millennia
and then things that have been brought in
since Euro-settlement,
so we have all of the common invasive species.
One of the main reasons the goats are here
in all this shrubbery behind us,
is exotic bush honeysuckle.
It was brought in as an ornamental.
'Til a few years ago, you could buy it at every garden store
and the birds poop it out, then it's everywhere
and become a very, very serious issue.
Prior to using goats, we used chainsaws and herbicide,
and fire.
Many of the sites are too rugged to use machinery
and so, really, your only option is hand labor.
This site, for instance, prescribed fire
just won't carry through this brush layer.
We're using grazers as a surrogate for fire.
This area would've burned nearly annually
so once a year, there would have been a great disturbance.
Wildfire, they came through
and it top-killed all of the brush
and let the prairie flourish
and because this site has a federally endangered butterfly,
there's some apprehension to burning too much.
- What is that butterfly?
- Jesse: The regal fritillary.
- Inga: That's a mouthful.
- Jesse: Yeah, it's only known from just a few places
on earth.
- Inga: Really?
- Jesse: Very rare, federally endangered butterfly.
Goaty goats!
T-1000.
- Can I pet you?
Will you let me pet you?
Some scratches up here.
Come here, sweetie, look at this.
- So, do you consider yourself to be a farmer?
- Yeah, absolutely.
When we first got goats, we bought a dozen
to see if we could use them to manage natural area
because that's what our business had done for over a decade
but now that we have hundreds of goats,
I'm very much a farmer.
- So, do you like goats, do you like working with them?
I've always had cows which I think are the most docile,
easiest things to work with.
- Over the last 20 years,
we had employees for most of this time
and goats are, to some degree, easier to manage.
[laughing]
- I wish I could teach them how to milk cows. [laughing]
My whole dairy farm career, people have been saying,
"You should get goats instead of cows,
"because they're so much easier to work with."
And I think, boy,
if my cows are out of their fences all the time,
I don't think I could manage fencing for goats
'cause they're climbing everywhere and everything.
- We have cows on our own farm,
and I would have to say
that raising cattle's easier than raising goats.
- Yeah, but the goats are so much friendly,
or they have this appeal that is just so lovely.
- They have a personality, they seem to think quicker,
and they seem to be more social.
They're more like a dog.
[goats bleating]
- My cows will come up to me in the pasture
as long as I have a little treat for 'em,
and then they'll make me scratch 'em forever.
But if I'm out of treats, they're just like "Forget it."
- Yeah, we have goats that you can call individually,
and some of my best friends are goats.
[laughing]
- Well, thank you so much!
This was just such an inspiration.
- Thanks for coming out.
- Well now it's time for me to get off this ridge
and on to our next stop.
From the hills of southeastern Wisconsin,
I traveled to a farmstead in the North Woods
where Julie takes loving care of her small herd of goats.
When she realized they were producing more milk
than her family could drink,
Julie found a new way to get value out of her dairy goats.
[light melodic music]
[door opens and closes]
Hello, Julie. - Hi, Inga.
- May I have a seat? - Absolutely.
- Nice to see you. - You too.
- I see I've come just in time for milking.
- You have, you have.
- So, I've just been really feeling intrigued
by goats lately
and I've been trying to visit as many as I can,
so immediately I thought,
I need to come out and see Julie.
- Thank you.
- Goat milking is a little different than cow milking.
- Less than half the work.
- My cows will typically milk about 25 pounds a day
when they get on good pasture, it goes way up.
But how much do goats do?
- Well, right now I'm probably getting
about a pound a half a day
but that's because the kids are with her
and they're drinking a lot of milk.
- This year, I'm experimenting
with having my calves with the cows
which I know a lot of people do
and boy, are they healthy.
- Yes, they are.
- I don't mind sacrificing that little bit of milk,
I'm sure you don't either.
- Not at all, not at all. - Yeah, for healthy babies.
- That's right.
- So, how did you get into goat milking and goat farming?
- Well, I grew up in Appleton,
which is not exactly farming country,
but my great grandparents had a farm
just outside of Berlin, Wisconsin
and it was my favorite place in the whole wide world.
My great grandma Lucy was there as I was growing up,
and she had tons of animals and I decided then and there,
that that's what I wanted for my life when I could.
- There is something amazing, isn't there,
about being on a farm?
- There certainly is.
- I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm
and I find a lot of people will say to me,
"Well, and then you decided to be a farmer?"
Well, I decided to be a hairdresser,
but I failed out of beauty school, so I became a farmer.
[laughing]
But now I find that I have that need for those animals.
I need to be around it, and I enjoy milking.
- I do too, I do too.
- How did you decide on goats?
- Julie: Well, I had a neighbor who had baby goats
and as you know, there's nothing cuter than a baby goat.
- Inga: Oh, I know, I know.
- And that was the start of us getting two goats
which has turned into many more over the years.
- I don't blame you.
I've been spending a little bit more time with goats,
and I have Jersey cows which have these big personalities,
but the goats are so friendly.
- They certainly are, yes.
- It's just such a nice feeling that they're--
I feel needed. [laughing]
- Julie: It's like having a bigger Golden Retriever.
[laughing]
- So how did you decide on soap making?
- Well, we had started to do farming
back in the early 2000s
and were wondering about how to make things profitable.
At that time, we had a gentleman come up
from the department of Ag, Trade, and Consumer Protection
to help us with our financials
and when he found out we had goats,
he told my husband
he could just take his wallet out of his pocket,
shake all the money out on the table,
'cause he'd never see it again.
[laughing]
And a few months later, I was in Eau Claire
at the Value Added Farming Conference
and met Tony and Della Ens from down near Brodhead.
They had a grant to teach several other farm families
how to make goat milk soap
and I thought that sounded really interesting,
so I went down and spent time with them and their farm
and learned how to make soap
and I've been doing it ever since.
- And really turned it into a business.
- Julie: Yes, I did.
- That is so, for me,
we went through this barn fire thing
and the creamery burning down,
and now I'm sort of having to just stay strong emotionally,
and meeting with ladies like you,
hearing your story and seeing the success that you've had,
I can't even tell you how much it's helped me
and really said to me, "Hey, it's gonna happen.
It can happen."
Because there's no way I'm gonna give up my cows,
and I might be having some goats soon, too.
I'm not gonna give those up.
So, I have to keep figuring out a way--
- Well, we can help you with that.
- That must have been nice raising a family, too,
and having that flexibility.
- It was very nice.
Our kids were in grade school at the time
and when I first started making soap,
I made it in our regular kitchen.
My concern at the time was, in order to make soap,
you have to use lye
and I was concerned about having my kids around that.
- 'Cause lye is, like, a chemical, right?
- Yes, a very caustic chemical so I wear gloves
and I'm very careful when I do that part of the process.
And I was doing it in our own kitchen,
but I would only do it
during the hours my kids were in school
and would have to clean everything up real good
by the time they got home.
And a number of years ago, we built a dedicated soap kitchen
off the back of our garage
which has a door that locks so I can leave my mess behind,
[laughing] keep it safe.
- This is wonderful.
I would love to see where you make the soap, if that's okay?
- Oh, I'd be delighted to share that with you.
[light guitar music]
- So, these soaps look amazing, they're so fun
and beautiful.
It looks like it's an easy thing to do.
When I think of soap making,
I think "Oh, you can just throw it together."
What's the process?
- Well it actually takes at least four to six weeks
from start to finish.
- That's crazy. - I know. [Inga laughs]
So, I start by making just a big plain bar
and to do that, I have to use frozen goat milk
and combine that with lye.
If I didn't use the milk frozen,
the lye would heat up so hot
that there would be a burnt orange chemical reaction to it.
So, I have those in the sink
and then on the stove,
I'm melting all my oils and bringing them to temperature.
And when those two products are ready to be combined,
I put them together in a large pot.
I use a electric drill with a paint stirrer on the end
for about 10 minutes,
then pour all that into a big Tupperware container.
The Tupperware container sits for 24 hours
so that the soap will harden
and there's a chemical process called saponification
where the lye no longer is caustic.
That comes out of the Tupperware
and sits on the shelf to dry for about four to six weeks.
At the end of that time,
I bring the soap up to the soap kitchen,
I cut the bar into big slices,
put it through the food processor and grate it,
put it back on the stove for a second melt
and if you've ever heard of French milled soaps,
it means they've been melted more than once
and the reason for that
is so the soaps last longer and hold their scents longer.
- Inga: Oh, interesting,
so these are really artisan products.
What is the difference, can you tell folks,
between your basic bar of soap
and something that's homemade with care?
- To actually be considered soap, you have to use lye.
And if you look at some of the things
that you think of as soap in the grocery store,
they aren't labeled as soaps.
They might be labeled as moisturizing bars,
or something to that effect
and are full of a lot of different chemicals.
- They're like the margarine instead of butter.
- Yes, yes, that's an excellent analogy.
And with goat milk soap,
the goat milk in and of itself is a moisturizer
and when you make homemade soap,
all the natural glycerin is retained in the soap.
Glycerin is a humectant,
which draws moisture to your skin
so you're actually getting moisturizing benefits
both from the soap itself and the goat milk.
- Well, I'm excited to share some of it.
It smells delicious in here
with all the different essential oils.
This is heaven.
- It is, it is.
- But I need to get back to the kitchen.
I'm so excited that the ladies are gonna be showing up soon
and I hope that you'll join them for a little goat yoga.
- Thank you, I would love to.
- Well let's head back into the kitchen and frost our cake.
[folksy guitar music]
Having a farm definitely has its challenges
and that's why I surround myself with wonderful people
and some of those wonderful people happen to be mothers,
especially my mother who comes down
and she helps me here all the time,
whether she's helping me weed the garden,
chase cows around, or help me in the kitchen.
And today, I wanted to celebrate those mothers in my life
with a little bit of
a nettle moss cake, I like to call it.
It's a cake made out of nettles
and I know you might be thinking,
"That sounds terrible."
It's gonna taste amazing.
And it's gonna look beautiful.
So, I've already baked my cakes, and what I did for that
was that I just creamed the butter and the sugar together,
I added six eggs, I let all that come together.
Put in two tablespoons of vanilla,
four teaspoons of lemon juice, the zest of two lemons,
and then I slowly added two cups of pureed nettles.
Finally, I added four cups of flour,
four teaspoons of baking powder,
and a half a teaspoon of salt.
Once that came together,
I put them in three different pans
and baked them in the oven.
I baked them at 325? for about 25 minutes.
I bake them low and slow
so that I don't lose the color of the nettles.
And now, we're ready to make our goat cheese frosting.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do is,
I'm gonna take some of that wonderful goat cheese
that I got from Diana,
add it to my mixer.
Now I've got some cream cheese,
a little bit of vanilla.
And I'm gonna whip this up.
And now, when it's on low, I'm gonna add my powdered sugar.
Give that a swirl, it's looking good.
I gotta taste it here.
That's gonna be delicious.
All right, now we're ready to get our frosting going here.
My first layer here, I'm just gonna whip that right on out.
Taste everything as you go.
If you like your frosting a little bit sweeter,
then put in a little bit more sugar, powdered sugar.
Now I'm ready for that next layer.
[light guitar music]
I'm not interested in really
making this cake look beautiful with the frosting
because we have a trick that we're gonna use
for making it look like moss.
My mother made this cake for me a few years ago
and when I first saw it, I thought,
"Well, why would she put moss on a cake?
"That doesn't make any sense."
And then I realized it wasn't moss at all.
All right, that looks good.
So, the trick to her moss frosting
was actually that extra cake that we made,
and you can just crumble it on top.
This is so cute.
This is another fun recipe you can make with kids.
When my nephews are here,
our activities are either doing something on the farm
or doing something in the kitchen
and so this is a fun recipe to make with those little kids
'cause you get to squish up cake.
How fun is that?
[light guitar music]
All right, so that was pretty easy,
and it looks really kind of amazing,
I think it looks amazing and really fun.
Now I'm just gonna decorate with a few flowers on top.
If you have some fun little fairy statues or something
that you want to play with or anything else
that makes it look really fun,
you can have a really good time with this cake.
And I think that looks beautiful
and now I'm ready to take it to the ladies.
[light upbeat music]
You'll be delighted by the taste of this sweet nettle cake.
Combined with the creaminess of a goat cheese frosting,
served with a hot herbal tea
and enjoy it with friends.
Well, I hope this has inspired you
to gather the important ladies in your life
and take a little time out for cake and tea.
And I hope you'll gather with us next time...
- All: Around the Farm Table .
- I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
[cheerful folksy music]
- Narrator: Around the Farm Table
is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
united to grow family agriculture,
Heartland Credit Union,
Focus Funds for Wisconsin Programming
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.