The ambition for broad acres leads to poor farming, even with men of energy. I scarcely ever knew a mammoth farm to sustain itself; much less to return a profit upon the outlay. I have more than once known a man to spend a respectable fortune upon one; fail and leave it; and then some man of more modest aims, get a small fraction of the ground, and make a good living upon it. Mammoth farms are like tools or weapons, which are too heavy to be handled. Ere long they are thrown aside, at a great loss.
-Abraham Lincoln
Frank Reese was the first farmer to work with Heritage Foods. He raises all the poultry that we sell including numerous breeds of heritage turkey, heritage chicken, heritage duck and heritage goose. For more information on the individual breeds please visit our breed page.
History of the Heritage Turkey
2016 marked the 100th anniversary of Master Poultry Farmer Frank Reese’s turkey flock arriving to Kansas (and 173 years of the genetics), a milestone for American farming, and one more great reason to celebrate Thanksgiving with a Heritage turkey.
Fans of Frank’s Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch turkeys include Alice Waters, who says “These birds are without a doubt the tastiest birds you can possibly serve.” Frank has become an icon of American farming, and has been featured in publications ranging from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to National Geographic and Time magazine. His story is a Rosetta Stone of the sustainable agricultural movement and the reason why the word “heritage” is synonymous with the word “heirloom.”
Frank’s birds are 100 percent antibiotic-free and free-range from the parent stock to the hatching to the harvest. They are not only a model of responsible farming, but also delicious – they bring a character of flavor and juiciness that cannot be matched. They also come with a sweeping history that is as epic as any American Tradition.
Why Lineage is important
THE BIRD BROTHERS
In 1916, poultry farmers with the unlikely name of the Bird Brothers (their real name) won a blue ribbon at a poultry show at Madison Square Garden.
In 1944, the Meyersdale Republican (of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania) wrote that the Bird Brothers’ “success as developers and propagators of the best strains of Giant Bronze turkeys made the name of their firm known in nearly every civilized country in the world. They exhibited fowls at Madison Square Garden for 27 consecutive years, and never without taking blue ribbons.”
Frank’s birds are descendants of the Bird Brothers’ Hatchery turkeys from 1916, a flock that can be directly traced to 1843 and the legendary Boston Livestock Show.In 1917, the mother of Frank’s future mentor Norman Kardosh – who Frank would meet at a poultry show in 1955, when Frank was just seven years old – received ten Bird Brother Standard Bronze turkey eggs as a wedding present, and passed them on to her son.
Long gone are the days when viable bird eggs were given as wedding gifts (or when there were poultry shows in the center of New York City), but back then, in a country driven by family farms, there was nothing strange about it at all. Norman’s mom had the eggs shipped to Kansas by railcar, where Frank would eventually found his farm. These eggs would be the beginning of a flock of Bronze turkeys that by 2016 would become the only breed of turkey whose lineage could be traced back over 173 years — including the last century in Kansas.
In every family, there is pride of history and lineage. This is no different for poultry or livestock. These birds are the progeny of poultry that was bred for flavor.Norman Kardosh spent his life teaching Frank how to raise poultry responsibly, because he knew he was leaving his legacy to Frank, and he stressed the importance of pure genetics. Norman said, “If you mess them up it will take fifteen years to straighten out... if it’s even possible.”The Standard Bronze is the perfect bird — flavorful, healthy, and robust — and represents not just a line of genetics, but the farmer’s love and care in breeding the best turkeys in the world.A Heritage turkey is defined as a turkey that mates naturally, has a slow rate of growth, and lives a long time. Heritage genetics are the foundation for humanely raised livestock.
The American Poultry Association is America’s oldest agricultural association and the keeper of the standards for poultry breed identification. Certification by the APA is the only label that matters when it comes to truly “heritage” poultry. Frank is the first sustainable commercial farmer to receive certification by the APA for his birds as purebreds, standards that they set in 1873. Frank is currently the only farmer selling APA turkeys under USDA certification.
By the early 1970s, factory farming would take over, and turkeys became most commonly bred for traits that would genetically deform them and destroy their flavor — namely how fast and how big they could grow. Within twenty years turkeys that were loaded with antibiotics to keep them alive and were so top heavy they could not walk had become the norm. In fact they were growing so fast that turkeys became so inexpensive as to nearly bankrupt the industry.
Eat Them to Save Them
In 2001, Slow Food USA Founder Patrick Martins put the Standard Bronze turkey on the Slow Food “Ark of Taste” — a metaphoric vessel designed to highlight agriculture on the verge of extinction — and suddenly found himself in the turkey business as well, launching Heritage Foods USA to help Frank expand and successfully deliver his flock. The Turkey Project has happened every year since 2002 with deliveries made to homes around the country as well as restaurants and shops.
Frank Reese turkeys are available every year fresh for Thanksgiving directly from Heritage Foods USA, including the Standard Bronze, Bourbon Red, White Holland, Black, and Narragansett breeds. Birds deliver via Overnight FedEx for delivery the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. To order, visit HeritageFoods.com or call (718) 389-0985.
Frank Reese chickens, ducks and geese are also available for sale year round. All Good Shepherd poultry are raised outdoors, antibiotic free, and conformed to standards set by the American Poultry Association.
Regarding the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of his flock, Frank says, “We are incredibly proud to have preserved this lineage of America’s best turkeys. Something that started as a handful of eggs — a wedding present! — is now a thriving flock. And to be embraced by Slow Food, Heritage Foods and so many great chefs has really helped us get our message out to the public: genetics and responsible farming matter. Not just as something fashionable, but where it counts, on the table.”
Patrick Martins adds, “Frank is a real super hero in the poultry business. His farming practices should be a model for anyone who cares about taste and the survival and success of true heritage breeds. We started our business because we believed in Frank, and his birds have really sustained us. It is nearly impossible to compete with his birds.”Taylor Boetticher of The Fatted Calf in California, one of the largest purchasers of heritage turkeys in America, says, “Promoting the importance of strong genetics is an important national issue and no one exemplifies this plight better than Frank. His turkeys are simply the best.”
In 2006 we got a handwritten letter from farmer Mark Newman asking us if Heritage Foods would ever consider selling his pasture raised old school Berkshire pigs. We said yes and a relationship grew that still continues today, now through his son David who has maintained the genetic line of Berkshires which can be traced back to the 17th and 18th century lines that came to these shores by way of the Berkshire region of England.
From the air, Newman Farms, in south central Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks, looks more like a pioneer settlement or a holiday camp than any sort of pig farm. Wooden huts are scattered across green fields like bungalows, where contented Berkshire pigs live their lives, happily on-pasture.
Pigs on Newman Farm are raised 100% on-pasture. The sows raise their piglets in huts that dot the fields of the farm. The babies live inside the huts until they are old enough to jump over the 6-inch wooden board that blocks the entrance. Once they make the great leap, they have an entire field to run on and they can mingle with the other piglets from the other huts.
David Newman is both a farmer and scientist. “The farmer came first,” he laughs. His degrees are in animal science, and he holds a Ph.D in meat science and muscle biology, focused on meat quality. “As I became a scientist and got involved in education, I applied what I was learning to understand what we could do better.”
Berkshires were the favorite breed of British royalty and were first introduced to the New World in 1823. Since then, Berkshire bloodlines have remained exceptionally pure and have become a mainstay favorite of chefs and diners, legendary for their exceptionally bright pork flavor and thick, delicious fat cap. And if anyone were to question their excellence, just ask David. “It’s not a matter of opinion!” he insists, passionately. “It’s a scientific fact, Berkshires are the most marbled hog on the market today.” David is a master breeder and works hard to keep the lines on his farm separate and he is always working to improve the Berkshire breed on his farm.
David lives on the farm with his wife, Kristin, his mom Rita, and his two kids. “I got my start through my family. My parents were hog farmers, but primarily in the commercial pig business. In the 1980s my parents raised pigs in confinement. There were some very challenging economic times for everyone in production, and we realized we were going to have to do something differently. Kristin came from a family farming background also and is a major part of the operations success today, working for the farm along with their team of employees.
“In the 1990s my parents decided they wanted to go back to their roots. We were going to have to be very large to be successful in the commercial sector, and my father decided we should focus on quality. We changed our genetic program and our nutrition program. We became Certified Humane®, and we chose to focus on Berkshire pigs for their quality.”
David and his family are the future of American farming! They are young, energetic and very passionate about the future of agriculture. David and Kristin work with a team of farmers who raise their Berkshires to supply Heritage Foods and the national network of chefs who rely on his product for their menus.
We met Larry and Madonna Sorell in 2002, as growers for Frank Reese and the Heritage Turkey Project. As their turkey flock grew in size, so did the Sorell’s importance to Heritage Foods.
When you see Red Wattle pork on a menu, what you are seeing is a five-state, twelve farm network founded by Larry and Madonna, dedicated to raising a storied breed that was once upon a time nearly extinct. Larry and Madonna are the heroes of this story, avatars of the heritage food movement, true believers who were destined to become the Guardians of the Red Wattle. They are proof positive of the ethos that when it comes to endangered livestock, “you have to eat them to save them.”
In the beginning, back in 2004 when the Heritage Foods wholesale business began selling pigs, a market for the Red Wattle pig was built on a handshake agreement with chefs Zach Allen and Mark Ladner, then at Lupa Restaurant in NYC. They recognized the high-quality and undiminished taste that came from a Red Wattle pig humanely raised on-pasture and antibiotic free, using traditional farming methods. The deal with Ladner, and the partnership with Larry and his Lazy S Farms, were part of the origins of Heritage Foods.
“We traveled 18,000 miles to get started,” Larry says matter-of-factly about a Heritage Foods Odyssey whose mission was to search out rare Red Wattle sows and collect a viable genetic lineage of this incredible pig whose American legacy goes back to 18th century New Orleans. "When we began, we had two Red Wattle gilts and a boar, and we had to travel all over the United States to start a herd."
“Now I’ve kinda retired from raising animals, but we have a dozen Amish growers working with us, and I pick up the hogs and pay for them, and then bring them to the processor, Paradise Locker. I drive a tractor trailer and go around picking up three hundred pounders, fifty to eighty head a week. We have farms in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa... that’s a lot of traveling. We may have four or five pick-ups every week. You wear out a truck pretty fast.”
Larry, now over eighty, does less of the driving, but he still keeps all the relationships going, which isn’t easy considering the Amish don’t have phones inside their homes! “I’ll have to quit sometime but right now it’s going pretty good. The driving is easy. The hard job is you gotta keep Amish families happy, picking up their hogs, coordinating, monitoring the size of the animals, and making sure we have the right amount — each week we round up 50 to 100 pigs. And we’ve been doing it for almost 20 years now.”
Thanks to Larry and Madonna’s work, the Red Wattle was upgraded to Threatened status from Critical on The Livestock Conservancy’s watch list, a great achievement for the cause of biodiversity, one of the most important issues of our time
We met the Goods through a connection at Kansas State University where Craig’s father was a distinguished professor. Craig spent his life in agriculture growing up in the Flint Hills of Kansas, some of the best agricultural land in the world, perfectly adapted to free ranging livestock, which feed on the perennial grasses that grow there naturally.
The Good’s hog operation began in earnest in 1981, and they have continuously raised hogs there for the past 37 years. Their Duroc herd started with a few sows from Craig’s former employer who started raising Duroc pigs in the 1940s — with females obtained through Sears and Roebucks! As Craig explains, “I took a job in 1975 working with an outstanding stockman who raised purebred Duroc pigs here in Kansas. His name was Fred Germann, and he was one of the oldest and best Duroc breeders in the U.S. Things sure have changed since then, but the Durocs that we now raise have ancestry that goes back to those Sears females, approximately 85 years ago.”
Duroc is an American breed that was used as the foundational genetics for the entire pig industry in the United States because of their good growth rate, body type, and mothering instincts. But big agriculture continued to overbreed the Duroc for certain traits related to higher profits and they crossed it with other pig breeds. Soon the industrial pig became utterly unrecognizable, and it became almost impossible to tell that it had originally derived from Duroc genetics.
Craig, on the other hand, continued to breed his Durocs to improve their genetics with traits particular to Craig’s preferences, while staying true to the original healthy and hearty breed. Craig always put a lot of thought into which sows he would breed with which boars as he worked to improve meat quality and edibility, as opposed to faster growth. He also selected pigs for the demeanor of the animals, who he treats like members of his own family. Craig bred for strong animals and sought out leaner carcasses (although the Duroc is supremely marbled). He also bred for skeletal size – Craig likes good length of body, for better loin eye size and fat distribution.
Over the years, the Durocs on Good Farm became his own breed, even though they looked like and acted like true old school Durocs. The Goods continue to bring in new lines to avoid inbreeding, but they work with the lines to continue improving their particular version of the Duroc.
Craig and Amy also raise Gloucestershire Old Spots and Tamworths, both considered rare breeds.
Craig's father, Don, was a meat scientist and would eventually have a division of Kansas State University named after him. Together they raised purebred Angus cattle and crops on the farm. “I have had a passion for raising pigs,” says Craig, since taking pigs on as a 4-H project in 1965. Craig studied Animal Science at Kansas State University. “Amy and I were married in 1976 and 5 years later we made the decision to move to the farm that my father and mother had owned since 1961, near Olsburg, Kansas, on 1000 acres of Flint Hills pasture.”
We were saddened to hear of the passing of Doug Metzger, a founding farmer for Heritage Foods.
Doug raised heritage turkeys for us starting in 2003, our second year in business. He continued to grow rare birds, along with the Good Shepherd Ranch team and his wife Betty, for the next 15 years. Doug first started raising heritage breed poultry with his Dad in the 1940s. Life Magazine once published an article stating that Doug’s Dad, who lived to be 104, had more living descendants than any living American!
Doug was one of the first two farmers to raise heritage breed pigs for our burgeoning wholesale and mail order program. Doug raised purebred Berkshires and Tamworths and was a pioneer of the heritage breed movement in the United States.
Doug was a great storyteller and connector of people. He had the foresight to introduce us to Paradise Locker Meats in 2005 which soon became the lead processor for heritage breeds in the nation.
Doug was always on top of trends and he ran a diversified farm that adapted to the moment. He was the holder of many secrets of agriculture and a master of successfully growing a great variety of foods on his sprawling 1500 acre farm. Doug believed using chemicals in farming was not necessary and said that good farmers should be able to find ways around needing to use them.
As a pig supplier for Heritage Foods, Doug extended us the credit we needed to start our business. We would not exist as a company if it were not for Doug.
Douglas K. Metzger, 84, of Oneida, Kansas passed away at the Sabetha Manor in Sabetha, Kansas.
Douglas was born on August 25, 1938, the son of Wilhelm and Julia (Meyer) Metzger at their farmhouse west of Oneida, Kansas. Douglas was the oldest of three children. Douglas attended grade school in Oneida. He attended high school in Sabetha and was a very involved student. He graduated from Sabetha High School in 1956.
Douglas was united in marriage to his high school sweetheart, Betty Locher, on September 30, 1956. Douglas and Betty were blessed with four children and shared 66 years together. Douglas was a lifelong farmer who raised diverse livestock and crops with his family. Douglas enjoyed traveling with Betty and meeting new people everywhere they went. Douglas and Betty became members of the Sabetha Apostolic Christian Church in 1986.
Douglas was preceded in death by his parents and his son, Darryl Metzger at birth.
Douglas is survived by his wife, Betty; his sons, Mark Metzger and Steven (Liz) Metzger; his daughter, Marilyn (Stanley) Wiegand; his three grandchildren, Naomi (Kyle) Stillwell, Joel Wiegand, and Simon Wiegand; and his sisters, Willa (James) Steiner and Marge Metzger.
Doug Metzger was truly at the ground zero of our business and the heritage food movement. He was the magic man that first introduced us to our processor Paradise Locker Meats, with whom we have worked and grown ever since and he worked together with Frank Reese raising heritage turkeys from about 2002 to 2013.
At 83-years-old, Doug raises purebred, certified Berkshire and Tamworth pigs on his 1,500 acre farm in Seneca, Kansas, with his wife Betty.
In an era of specialization Doug is an anomaly. Doug is famous for adapting to any moment. In 2001 he took our call and agreed to raise heritage turkeys for us with Frank because he believed that the growing food movement would appreciate the flavor of the birds his grandfather raised. As demand grew for quality meat, Doug got into heritage pigs and transitioned his commodity farm to a pastured farm and haven for the rare Tamworth breed.
Doug has been farming since 1951. As a kid he raised chickens but gave them up when he got into turkeys. As he got older, he broke into the milk cattle game. Then he tried sheep, but he says he couldn’t get them to breed right. He also raised Aylesbury ducks — a rare heritage breed. Over the years the acres on his sprawling farm have been used to grow wheat, corn, oats, barley, sorghum, alfalfa, and rye. He even grew flax one year because he heard it was supposed to help the immune system of the cattle, which he thought it did. “It certainly made their coats look wonderful,” Doug says.
Today farmers are incentivized to grow monocrops of corn and soybean — “that’s all they want us to grow,” Doug explains, “and farmers haul their crops to town instead of using it for something on their own farm.” Doug remembers fondly the days when a diversified farm would grow corn and turn it into whiskey, or when soybeans were grown for the purpose of feeding milk cattle — as Doug did on his farm. “Keep your grain,” Doug insists, “and use it to grow a truly sustainable farm.”
Doug was never one to use chemicals to grow food. He believes any talk of sustainability is not real when you raise only one crop or when you use chemicals to do it. “My buddy and I could clear 100 acres of weeds in a day if we worked through the night, and we did not need any additives to do it. All those chemicals are part of the reason there are so many cancers around, if you ask me.” Doug has amassed generations of farming secrets having grown so many foods naturally, often calling upon experiences from decades ago to solve a problem that presents itself today.
Doug comes from a truly great American farming family — Life Magazine once wrote that Doug’s father, who lived to be 104, had more living descendants than any American – many of them farmers. His is part of the story of immigrants who came to the New World and made good through old-fashioned values, tradition, and hard work.
“We’re here today to save these breeds,” says Doug, who is as down-home as the farm he still works on as he approaches his 84th birthday. “Save the breeds and make a little money. We got a lot of things going on, we have a lot of land. But it’s getting hard to keep up with it all… I need more young people! When I was young, we raised turkeys in spring and sold ‘em all by Christmas. We milked cattle all year round. I want to keep working — my dad was helping me when he was 84!”
His conversational style always brings insight and interesting thoughts to bear. We hope Doug and Betty work with us for many years to come and that their beliefs of diversified farming continue. Today, his farm is supported through the work of his daughter Marilyn and her husband Stan, and their children Simon and Joel.
Heritage Foods is also proud to have developed relationships with local producers outside the Kansas City area where most of our meats are processed. These include Kenneth Johnson who started with us as a 4-H student and kept his line going after that, a line he originally sourced from Craig Good. We also work with Sharon Meyer and Trent and Troy Baker (the Baker boys) who raise some of the largest and nicest Berkshire pigs in the nation.
Ben Machin of Tamarack Sheep Farm grew up in Vermont on a small organic homestead, where his family grew their own food, and produced apple juice, apple cider vinegar, and maple syrup. After some years working for the US Forest Service as a Smokejumper, Ben came back to Vermont to study and work on various natural conservation projects, but raising sheep has been in Ben's blood for generations. “These sheep have been in our family for over 90 years,” he says with salt-of-the-earth humility.
Ben’s great-grandfather started a Tunis flock in the 1920s. Years later, Ben's grandfather, Herb, began to work with Dorset Horn sheep for a 4-H project. In 2006, in Herb’s last days, Ben made the monumental and wonderful decision to dedicate himself to revitalizing the family flock. Grace Bowmer joined Ben in 2008. Grace came with a background in architecture, site design, landscaping, and gardening, and together they purchased the land and built a barn.
Ben and Grace raise two breeds — along with the Tunis, they specialize in the Horned Dorset, which Ben “loves especially because both males and females grow horns. There are more differences, one breed may be slightly more sweet tasting than the other, but we’ll let the customer make up their minds. We focus on the farming.
“We’ve been steady in our approach,” says Ben. “The business has been growing modestly — there is always growing interest in local food. Right now we’re at a good size, this has been sustainable and sufficient to support a family. We believe in it. The only new thing is we added a fifth generation – we have a two year old daughter! I guess we’re going to have to get her to work. Actually, in Vermont we’re lucky, a lot of people here are interested in farming, we don’t have trouble finding people to work with us. We get people coming from university farm programs, and non traditional backgrounds – people who want to make career transitions and get out of their offices and work with food. That is not going away, but it is always more work then they expect. Life ends up being a lot of work no matter what you do, but we are very lucky.”
Joseph Hubbard is one of the youngest farmers in the Heritage Foods network. Joseph learned the art of farming from his family and raises sheep and goats on the vast Flint Hill pastures around Manhattan, Kansas.
The Flint Hills, a band of hills in eastern Kansas stretching into North Central Oklahoma, is a region that is not good for plant agriculture, but ideal for pasture raised animals. This ecological region is where the most dense coverage of intact tallgrass prairie can be found in North America including Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, Indiangrass, Switchgrass, Prairie Dropseed, and Sideoats Grama. These tallgrass varieties are responsible for producing the tastiest grass fed animals on the planet.
Joseph raises multiple breeds of lamb for different reasons: Katahdin for their multiple birth and high growth rate, St. Croix for the natural tannin in their gut that wards off parasites and White Dorper for their muscling. Joseph is also a major producer for our Goatober Project.
We source our Akaushi from HeartBrand Ranch, fifth-generation Texas cattle ranchers who have taken great care to diligently maintain Akaushi genetics by replicating Japanese production systems, management practices and breeding programs. HeartBrand’s herd is now more than 14,000 head strong.
The Beeman Family was able to access the Akaushi breed thanks to a loophole in the Trade Act of 1994 when three bulls and eight Akaushi cows were able to leave Japan in a custom equipped Boeing 747 for the Texas heartland where they are still treated like a treasure to this day.
HeartBrand’s Akaushi cattle are started on grass until they are 500-700 pounds, then transitioned to a higher energy feed that gives them intense marbling. Mother cows live on grass their entire lives.
HeartBrand conducts DNA verification to preserve the purity of the Akaushi breed and ensure a consistent and high-quality beef eating experience.
Long Meadow Ranch Cattle Company is the owner of more than 350 outstanding Highland cattle with bloodlines that include the 2000 Grand and Reserve Champion cows and the 1999 Champion Cow/Calf Pair.
The growing operation is based at Long Meadow Ranch's Mayacamas Estate where they maintain bulls and selected cows. The 500-acre farm in Tomales (in Marin County) is home to the mother cow herd. The weaned calves and yearlings enjoy lush Carneros grasses on the 157-acre Di Rosa Preserve along Highway 121 in southern Napa County.
Long Meadow is also famous for their delicious wines and fantastic restaurant Farmstead headed by chef Stephen Barber. Housed in a former nursery barn, the restaurant is centered around an open kitchen, family-style dining, a full bar and an authentic farm-to-table menu.
Mario and Teresa Fantasma are the founders of Paradise Locker Meats. Mario worked in the commodity meat industry for decades before deciding that he wanted something better. So he went to the bank and got a loan to purchase an existing slaughterhouse in Paradise, Missouri, just outside Kansas City. The old plant, which had frequently been used as a local election headquarters, eventually burned down during a curing accident and the Fantasma family was at a crossroads. Would they open a new plant or call it quits and go back to working for the big guys? Thanks to prompting from their two sons, Lou and Nick, who both work there now, Mario and Teresa decided to invest in a new building a few miles away.
We first met the Fantasmas in 2005 and they immediately became USDA inspected (from state inspection) allowing them to ship across state lines for Heritage Foods accounts. Today their operation has expanded from 6 employees to 46, they recently doubled in size, and they are now a Certified Humane facility.
Paradise Locker processes most of the steak and hamburger we sell, but most importantly, they process, cut, cure and ship over 200 pigs a week for hundreds of Heritage accounts from coast to coast. WE speak with them numerous times a day as they work with us to improve the quality of meat in fine restaurants, cure houses, meat counters and homes around the country.
Paradise Locker has won numerous awards for their injection-curing program, are a fixture of the BBQ circuit locally and are growing their retail store as well. Heritage is honored to have grown with them and looks forward to growing more in the future.
Ruth and Jim Sickler run Miz-inka Farm, which has been in the Sickler family since 1929. Both Ruth and Jim grew up on dairy farms helping their families with the farm chores for as long as they can remember. For the past 25 years Ruth and Jim have maintained the farm’s dairy business. In 2008 they began raising Boer meat goats.
The Sicklers originally looked to goats as a tool for making the farm more sustainable, but have grown to love the fun and excitement the herd brings their grandkids. Their diverse herd, which now boasts 75 goats of all ages, includes La Mancha dairy goats, a source of milk and cheese for the family.
Jim and Jean Bright work with their grandchildren, who are avid 4-Hers, to show their goats around central New York State. The Brights have a dual purpose herd with Boers, Alpines and crosses. They have a registered Boer buck and registered Alpine buck in the herd. They milk their does by hand and have become especially skilled at making fresh cheeses. Their three-acre farm is home to 32 goats. Recently they have begun work on new property that will eventually house a larger farm. Plans are to expand to approximately 75 meat goats and 25 dairy goats with a milking parlor and cheese processing facility.
4 Tin Fish Farm is a family owned and operated micro goat dairy located in Central New York. The farm initially started out as a hobby for the Fish family, but as their passion grew they began to shift their thinking as to how they could turn the hobby into a family business. Their goal is to provide farmstead cheese to local restaurants and consumers and to raise quality Alpine dairy goats.
The Fish family learned of Heritage Foods through the Cornell Cooperative Extensions list serve that posted a request for more goats for our annual Goatober Project. Since responding the Fishes have produced goats for some of New York City's best restaurants.
We are are big fans of the Fishes, especially after a recent visit where we got a chance to taste their chèvre and feta.
