Goatober is 13 Years Old!
Goatober is 13 years old! This is an ominous achievement (but one that we are proud of!). Some relate "unlucky" thirteen to an idea that at the Last Supper, Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table. The goat is no stranger to controversy - goats play a prominent role in European witch imagery. In engravings depicting witch “sabbaths” the devil is often depicted as a goat or a goat-like man.
Any farmer who works with goats can attest to their mischievous nature — they are escape artists and can break in anywhere including the house where they eat everything from notebooks to the fabric on the back of chairs and couches! Goats are so in tune, they appear to connect to some power greater than themselves — during barn fires the instinct of all the animals in the barn is to follow the goats for a way out!
Luckily we never believed much in superstitions — no one can tell us that goat isn't delicious and that we shouldn't be eating more of it!
Goat meat is lean, clean, and a perfect canvas for an array of global flavors!
October is the natural season for goat meat, and as we have for over a decade, we are proud to feature delicious cuts of goat as part of our effort to communicate just how delicious goat meat is. Despite being lean, the meat is rich and flavorful and boasts light floral notes in every bite. Because goat meat has less fat, it lends itself to slow and low cooking including braises and barbecue — see our Cooking Tab for more information!
Goatober was launched because dairies need to produce milk to make cheese, and the only way for an animal to make milk is to have babies. On goat dairies, whenever a male is born, unless it’s kept as a breeder, there is not much use for it since males do not produce milk and the market for male goats is not a large one in the United States. Some male babies are sold onto the commodity market to lead unhappy lives in confinement while others are euthanized. We wanted to launch a project to keep all the kids on the farm, roaming the pastures, while also providing an additional source of income to the farmers. The natural mating cycle of goats is to be born in the spring and be ready for processing in the fall — that is why we call the project Goatober although it has gone by other names too like No Kid Left Behind! Since 2010 Goatober has grown to become a celebration of all things goat, the most widely consumed protein on the planet!