They belong to John “the Goat Guy” Foote and they all reside on an acre or more of riparian greenery in the San Pedro Valley in Dudleyville, home turf of Foote’s Hold Dairy, makers of farmstead goat cheese.
The dairy became a family business out of necessity. Foote, former executive chef at London Bridge Resort in Lake Havasu and past chef de cuisine for Hammond Hotels’ John Q Restaurants, had gotten out of the business of feeding people and into a tech support cubicle at Intuit. For five years, he took service calls and came home each night to the four goats that were his pets.
  
|
Beginning in April 2008, Foote began to increase the herd and processing cheese for sale at area farmer’s markets.
“The first few weeks I set up a sales table, I took home $60 cash each week,” he said.
It’s gotten better as word of mouth networking brings in more clients.
“I didn’t want to have to go looking for a minimum wage job,” he said, adding parenthetically, “Although some days I think it would be nice to be earning minimum wage.”
He goes on: “So we rolled the dice in this direction. It’s no longer something supplemental to be played at - it’s do or die now. We’re still struggling, but things are improving.”
Foote and wife, Crystal, traditionally log in 16-to-18-hour workdays with twice-a-day milkings of their Nubian, French Alpine, and African pygmy goats.
“Counting the bucks and yearlings, we have about 30 head right now and are getting ready for the winter kidding season. We’ll be adding some more milkers in the spring and when we get to the point of about three dozen girls giving milk that should bring production levels up higher and get us where we want to be. There’s only so much you can do at one time and with Crystal and I already working long hours, we want growth to be manageable as long as it allows us to make a sustainable living in the process.”
Foote looks the part of the farmer from his muck boots to his well-weathered straw hat, but the irony is he’s new to the farming life.
“Closest I came growing up was helping my folks raise AKC show dogs. Now, there are days I feel like the guy on the ‘Green Acres’ TV show, a city boy running a farm. But I’m a hermit by nature and this is my life here at the dairy. (I leave it go set up at farmer’s markets, but I do the family shopping on the way home and stay on the farm the rest of the week.) I have a happy life here and don’t need much more.”
In Tucson Foote can be found at farmer’s markets from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays at Broadway Village, southwest corner of East Broadway and Country Club Road; 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays at the Rincon Valley Farmers & Artisans Market, 12500 E. Old Spanish Trail; and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays at St. Phillips Plaza, southeast corner of North Campbell Avenue and River Road.
Foote’s dairy is listed on the Local Harvest Web page offering a variety of products including chevre cheese, fromage blanc, marsca-fromage, and paneer or queso blanco. They are pesticide-free organic cream cheeses from mild to sharp. They also offer goat milk yogurt with pro-biotics and cheesecake to order.
A lover of all kinds of critters, Foote says: “These animals are my business, but they’re also my babies. Most of them were bottle fed when they were young and they all have names and distinctive personalities.”
On the Local Harvest website he goes on: “Our girls thrive on fresh green pasture, organic grains, alfalfa hay, and much love. There’s is no shortage of hugs or belly scratches at Foote’s Hold Dairy.”
Lee Allen is a Tucson-based freelance writer.
Comments