In 1967, as a young woman in my ear­ly twen­ties, a ​“tip­ping point” (in the Mal­colm Glad­well sense) occurred in Paracu­ru, the fish­ing vil­lage in north­east­ern Brazil, where the Peace Corps had sent me. At the time, Paracu­ru was one of the poor­est places on Earth. I was help­ing a nun named Fabi­ana, a self taught mid­wife, deliv­er babies in grass shacks with dirt floors. The hus­band would sit on a low birth stool sup­port­ing his wife’s hips while Fabi­ana and I would deliv­er the baby.

The women of the vil­lage were still car­ry­ing water in gourds on their heads, so we estab­lished a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den at the church’s well. Using beds raised on stilts to increase aer­a­tion and pre­vent insect dev­as­ta­tion, we were able to scratch out more veg­eta­bles from the poor, dusty soil.

I began to real­ize that the two things I was engaged in — nurs­ing and farm­ing — were so vital, that the oth­er endeav­ors I had been con­sid­er­ing for my future looked pale in comparison.

Flash for­ward 17 years: Hav­ing com­plet­ed an RN and MPH, I was work­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Fran­cis­co Med­ical Cen­ter in the neona­tal inten­sive care unit when I met my sec­ond hus­band, Javier.

We want­ed to bring his par­ents to the Unit­ed States from Peru, but were at a loss as to what his father, a 60-year-old agron­o­mist and cheese mak­er would do once he arrived. Although he had always worked with cows, the amount of land required to raise them was pro­hib­i­tive, so we bought a herd of goats, rent­ed land out­side of Berke­ley, and start­ed milk­ing goats and mak­ing cheese.

Feed­ing time in the ear­ly days of Pat­ty and Javier’s cheese mak­ing oper­a­tion. (Pho­to: Bode­ga Goat Ranch)

The reck­on­ing

When Javier’s par­ents arrived, my father- in-law took one look at our books and said, ​“No one will ever make mon­ey at this, even tripling the amount of cheese you make.” He went on to oth­er endeav­ors, but we were already hooked on goats. Six months lat­er, in 1985, we found 7.5 acres near the town of Bode­ga in Sono­ma Coun­ty and moved our herd and our­selves out to the coun­try, north of the Bay Area. We sub­sti­tut­ed goat milk in sev­er­al of Javier’s dad’s cow recipes to pro­duce a fresh mild cheese that was much beloved by our clients, and Bode­ga Goat Ranch was born.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my father-in law’s pre­dic­tion came true. Although we became a ful­ly cer­ti­fied Grade B Dairy — pro­duc­ing 150 pounds of cheese a week for 9 months out of the year — we spent the next 12 years work­ing our oth­er ​“careers” to sup­port what the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture des­ig­nat­ed a ​“hob­by farm,” i.e. a small­hold­ing that is main­tained with­out expec­ta­tion of being a pri­ma­ry source of income.

In 1996, we were able to quit our out­side jobs and go full-time with Bode­ga Goat Cheese. At this impor­tant junc­ture, how­ev­er, we had to decide whether to great­ly expand the plant — buy more equip­ment and hire many more employ­ees — or stay a more mod­est size and real­ize a prof­it through decreased costs. Hav­ing already dou­bled pro­duc­tion vol­ume since quit­ting our out­side jobs, we elect­ed to do the lat­ter. We stayed the course for the next 8 years, until Javier and I went our sep­a­rate ways in 2004.

I decid­ed to remain on the ranch.

On the one hand, now on my own, I need­ed to find more help, but also real­ized that, to ensure qual­i­ty, I need­ed to con­tin­ue mak­ing the cheese. I also want­ed to down­size the scope of the oper­a­tion so I could keep it going by myself.

To solve this dilem­ma, I turned to a con­cept I call ​“team farm­ing.” Many young peo­ple are seri­ous about farm­ing but unable to pur­sue it because of the cost of land. By allow­ing young farm­ers to estab­lish their own ven­tures on my sev­en-and-a-half acres — and by pro­vid­ing hous­ing — I was able to ​“diver­si­fy” — max­i­mize the use of the space — and get help with the goats.

Anoth­er goal was to devel­op the land in order to solve the water prob­lem. In Sono­ma Coun­ty we get rain only over a three-to-four month peri­od — 60 inch­es in a nor­mal year, but only 29 in drought years. If we were able to sequester that rain­wa­ter, we would be able to grow all the feed for the ani­mals and stop buy­ing com­mer­cial feed.

Words such as ​“green,” ​“organ­ic” and ​“bio­dy­nam­ic” have entered the pub­lic ver­nac­u­lar. Were you to ask the per­son in the street their mean­ings, how­ev­er, many would be unsure how to defin­i­tive­ly reply. ​“Sus­tain­able,” for which I con­sid­er my farm to be a mod­el, is per­haps the most com­mon buzz­word at the moment. Here are two plau­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tions, though I’m sure there are others:

1) the abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue what you are doing indef­i­nite­ly with­out the deple­tion of the earth or sen­tient beings;

2) the three E’s; eco­nom­ic (the farmer earns a liv­ing and can cov­er his/​her bills), envi­ron­men­tal (no neg­a­tive impact) and edu­ca­tion­al (help oth­ers learn how to do this too).

Drought and regulation

Our cur­rent drought, now in its fifth year, has caused the cost of feed to sky­rock­et. Many farm­ers are being forced to sell off their live­stock. If I pay $20 for a bale of alfal­fa for exam­ple, a good­ly per­cent­age of that is the cost of haul­ing it in a gas guz­zling truck from fur­ther and fur­ther away. Once it gets to the town clos­est to me, I pay a deliv­ery fee to haul it up to my hay barn and then a labor fee for farm help to feed it out to the herd twice a day. For 50 to 60 goats, the cost is about $15,000 per year. In addi­tion, the Unit­ed States is the only coun­try that requires the farmer to pay the Depart­ment of Agriculture’s inspec­tion fees, which are required to run a cer­ti­fied dairy.

Increas­ing gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion costs upwards of $2,000 for the inspec­tions, not includ­ing the addi­tion­al cost of any required ​“improve­ments.” In spite of these increased costs, these same offi­cials, due to state bud­get cuts, have greater case­loads and are less avail­able. When we start­ed 30 years ago, our inspec­tor showed up every two to three weeks. Now we see our inspec­tor once every three months — the legal minimum.

We built our entire facil­i­ty from an exist­ing barn, but out­fit­ted it to meet USDA stan­dards. Back then, by doing most of the work our­selves, we were able to accom­plish this for around $10,000. Today, for those try­ing to ​“pass” 2015 require­ments, it costs about $100,000 just to build a cheese plant (where­as we also have a ​“milk­ing par­lor.”) In addi­tion to the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Food and Agri­cul­ture, it is now nec­es­sary to reg­is­ter with the USDA, a Home­land Secu­ri­ty require­ment, as cheese is a per­ish­able item, and con­sid­ered in the domain of pos­si­ble bioterrorism.

Two oth­er agen­cies that have come to vis­it are the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Health and Cal­i­for­nia OSHA. If you wish any addi­tion­al des­ig­na­tions on the label, such as ​“organ­ic” or ​“kosher,” those require sep­a­rate inspec­tions and sep­a­rate fees of at least $1,000 per year each. Addi­tion­al­ly, if you sell pro­duce at farmer’s mar­kets, you must reg­is­ter with the Envi­ron­men­tal Health and Safe­ty divi­sion, in each coun­ty in which you par­tic­i­pate. For a small farm­ing enter­prise, the reg­u­la­tions are oner­ous. Indeed, since most of the prob­lems to the food sup­ply have orig­i­nat­ed in larg­er, mech­a­nized, ​“indus­tri­al” facil­i­ties, it begs the ques­tion of why the small­er con­cerns (such as mine) should be treat­ed in the same way and not pro­rat­ed more fairly.

Besides gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion, anoth­er pro­hib­i­tive fac­tor for small farm­ers is out­side inputs. Just as min­ers became indebt­ed to the ​“com­pa­ny store,” many small farm­ers become indebt­ed to the com­pa­ny feed store, which then charges 18 per­cent on the debt incurred.

A sus­tain­able future

In his eye-open­ing book, The Pow­er of Duck, Takao Furuno describes the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese meth­ods of inte­grat­ing ducks into rice pad­dies to both fer­til­ize and con­trol pests with­out any pur­chased chem­i­cal products.

For the past 11 years, I have been fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ples of per­ma­cul­ture, which Rose­mary Mor­row in her book the Earth User’s Guide to Per­ma­cul­ture describes as ​“an approach to land use which weaves togeth­er micro­cli­mate, plants, ani­mals, soils, water man­age­ment and human needs into intri­cate­ly con­nect­ed, pro­duc­tive com­mu­ni­ties.” By doing so, I have been imple­ment­ing meth­ods that will allow me to raise up to 100 goats on my sev­en-and-a-half acres, with prac­ti­cal­ly no inputs from the out­side world. Much of the infra­struc­ture is already complete.

By repur­pos­ing the far­m’s old manure basins — lin­ing the bot­tom of one with rub­ber and cov­er­ing the sur­faces of all of them to pre­vent evap­o­ra­tion — Kar­lin can store enough annu­al rain­fall (even in a drought) to meet her far­m’s water needs. Potable water is stored in two 5,000 gal­lon tanks. (Pho­to: Bode­ga Goat Ranch)

First, an exca­va­tor dug six-foot wide canals to the con­tour of the hill to max­i­mize the cap­ture of rain water. Then he back­filled those canals with the exca­vat­ed sandy soil to act as drainage rock. In addi­tion, he cleaned out old manure ponds, which cre­at­ed a total water hold­ing capac­i­ty of 80,000 gal­lons. We put a rub­ber lin­er in the pond at the top of the prop­er­ty for water reten­tion through the dry sea­son. These ponds and canals fill with rain from the sky, but can be improved on in the future by being fed from the rain gut­ters on the farm’s roofs. Retain­ing water in such a way, even the pal­try 29 inch­es of rain that fell last year, is enough to sup­ply all our needs.

A small well is suf­fi­cient to fill two 5,000 gal­lon tanks for all our potable water, which pass­es through a UV light and is ozonat­ed to kill bac­te­ria with­out chlorinating.

Once our ponds are cov­ered to pre­vent evap­o­ra­tion, we will have enough water to pro­vide drink­ing water for all the ani­mals (the farm also has chick­ens and ducks and hon­ey bees) and grow enough plants to feed all of them sole­ly from our land.

Since goats ​“browse” like deer, their nat­ur­al diet is trees and shrubs — not pas­ture like sheep and cows. And it turns out we have suf­fi­cient land to raise enough trees to pro­vide all the food for 50 to 80 goats. Since they will eat in place, the labor cost of dis­trib­ut­ing feed will be elim­i­nat­ed. To pre­vent the goats from strip­ping the bark or destroy­ing the trunk of the trees we’re plant­i­ng, we will put on a pro­tec­tive sleeve, so they can prune all the hor­i­zon­tal branch­es with­out dec­i­mat­ing the sup­port­ing trunk. By stand­ing at the base of the tree, they will also be ​“fer­til­iz­ing” it as they eat.

In addi­tion to the trees, which will all but elim­i­nate the need for any com­mer­cial hay, we have built a 10-by-10 green­house for a project called ​“fod­der solu­tions.” Fol­low­ing mod­els devel­oped in Aus­tralia (which has pio­neered many water sav­ing and water recy­cling meth­ods), I will be buy­ing organ­ic bar­ley seed to sprout on nurs­ery trays in the green­house. Instead of buy­ing com­mer­cial grain (bar­ley in the case of dairy goats), this seed is one sixth the cost of the feed store grain. Once sprout­ed (which takes just six days to be able to feed out like sod) it has four times the pro­tein as the orig­i­nal seed. Since the tops stay green, unlike pas­ture which dries out, the mamas don’t drop their milk pro­duc­tion. The seeds are watered hydro­pon­i­cal­ly, with each tray drip­ping onto the shelf below, and then all water is col­lect­ed at a drain below and sent out to the goats for their drink­ing water.

The trees them­selves should be of a great vari­ety, but we con­sult­ed Ag Access at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis to deter­mine what species would be most ben­e­fi­cial. Inquir­ing about the nutri­tion­al analy­sis of an opti­mum goat diet, it turns out that one tree in par­tic­u­lar stood out, a tree lucerne or tagasaste. Orig­i­nal­ly from the Canary Islands but now grown exten­sive­ly in Aus­tralia, tagasaste is a mem­ber of the legume fam­i­ly and as such pro­duces seed pods and is a nitro­gen fixer.

The nutri­ous foliage of drought-resis­tant tagasaste trees will be able to feed Kar­lin’s goats through­out the year. (Pho­to: Bode­ga Goat Ranch)

The tree is plant­ed on the low­er edge of the canals, pro­vid­ing shade to pre­vent water evap­o­ra­tion. It puts down a 40-foot tap­root with­in two years, hit­ting ground water. It’s leaves rival alfal­fa in pro­tein and nutri­tion­al con­tent, but is more digestible for goats. Since it has ver­ti­cal growth it is non-inva­sive, although it is a non-native species. Along­side them, we will plant native trees that do well local­ly — ceonothus, wil­low, poplar, non-fruit­ing mul­ber­ry, hon­ey locust, Dou­glas fir, coy­ote bush, ama­ranth, quinoa and med­i­c­i­nal shrubs.

I believe that the above meth­ods will enable Bode­ga Goat Ranch to be tru­ly self-suf­fi­cient, while pro­vid­ing all the food need­ed to main­tain a small farm and at the same time gen­er­ate a sur­plus for the mar­ket that will pro­vide income. By think­ing out of the box, we will cre­ate a small-scale, replic­a­ble alter­na­tive for small farm­ers any­where, no mat­ter which plants and ani­mals they wish to cul­ti­vate. It is an alter­na­tive to indus­tri­al, mech­a­nized farm­ing, enabling earnest indi­vid­u­als to make a decent liv­ing while pro­vid­ing the high­est qual­i­ty food.