By Scott Stephenson, 

 

You may not be familiar with Capella Meadows yet, but Erik and Edda Boettcher’s organic goat farm in Brussels is on the verge of becoming an essential destination for food fans from far and wide. People will be coming to their new farm store to pick up some small-batch cheese and organic goat meat, or to hear a little bit about biodynamic farming techniques. Or just to check in on how construction is coming along on the cheese plant they’re building on the farm. 
    The Boettchers may be busy, but they set aside a bit of time recently to sit down at a picnic table in the shade for a conversation about the history of their unique farm and the many plans they have for their goat-centric future together.
Erik comes from a traditional farming background — he was raised on a farm right across the street from their current location. Growing up, his family mostly kept sheep, but goats did work their way into the mix. “We always had a few milking goats,” he explained. “It was my grandpa’s fancy when he was getting a little older. He said ‘oh, let’s get some goats’. And I kind of took that milking over — those four or five goats. I hand-milked them from when I was eight years old. And it just kind of became my animal, that I enjoyed. So then I grew it from that to actually making a good living with them. Shortly after, Edda came along. We kind of run the whole farm as a couple now — I guess the main part being the goats. At some point, Edda started with the cheese. The cheese part is all Edda’s doing. Mostly. With my support. Obviously.”
Edda recalls the situation a little differently. “I was basically greeted with a question like: ‘If you’re starting to date Erik, are you interested in cheesemaking? I had never planned to do that, but I think I’ve got the cheese bug now. I’m very much into cheesemaking.”
When she first came to Huron County, Edda didn’t have a whole lot of farming experience - she’s from Düsseldorf, Germany. “I’m a city slicker, as his sister points out... I accidentally came for a visit, and I never really left.” In a roundabout way, however, it was a shared passion for biodynamic farming that brought them together — it just wasn’t a passion shared between Erik and Edda! “My cousin knew Erik, because he had learned biodynamic farming on the farm she was living on, he invited her, and she invited me, and I stayed.”
However her first foray into the world of cheesemaking began, both Erik and Edda agree she’s very well-suited to the task, while he’s better suited to manage the farming side of the operation. The first cheese she started making was one of the most popular styles of cheese in Canada: cheddar. “It was not really a very intentional choice,” Edda explained. “It was just what was possible with the very limited opportunities we had to have with someone else doing the cheese. Gordon’s [Goat Dairy in Wroxeter ] at that time had been doing custom cheesemaking for three people, and only cheddar, as far as I remember. So we started with cheddar. And that, for a very long time, was our only cheese, because we had three children in the meantime, which took up way more time than we had expected. Last year, we really started with the cheese business. Before, it was just kind of a hobby, on the side.”
Erik pointed out that Edda was really slacking off on the cheesemaking when she was raising each of their three newborn children. “It didn’t get the focus to take off,” he surmised. Edda agreed, but also promised that things were about to change.“I was the main person, and I had three children in five years, basically. My focus was somewhere else. Our youngest is turning two soon — that’s independent enough, so last year I started making feta —that’s the cheese I make at Gordon’s Goat Dairy... there are more cheeses we’re planning, but I’m not going to tell [you] about it.”
Edda believes everybody should give goat cheese a try. “One thing which a lot of people like goat for is the taste. Although for some people, that’s why they don’t eat or drink goat. For some people, though, it’s that unique taste of the cheese. And for a lot of people, it’s easier to digest.”
Even though she’s a convert now, goat milk wasn’t always Edda’s thing. “The first goat milk I ever drank was at my mom’s, in coffee, and I refused the coffee, because it was so strong.” Erik broke in with a quick alert - “Disclaimer for Ontario Goat Producers,” he announced, “that happened in Germany.”
Before they could really get going with the cheese business, Erik and Edda spent years converting the previously-conventional farm to an entirely organic operation, guided by biodynamic principles. “It’s always a little bit of a rough couple first years,” Edda explained. “You have weeds popping up, and everything needs to kind of get back into balance. The first years I was here, that was always a big issue. The land was not really productive. It took a while to really get started. The farm is kind of over that big bump now.”
Edda offered a brief overview of the biodynamic farming movement. “Basically, it was the first form of organic farming. Actually, it started 100 years ago this year. At that point, a lot of farmers realized that industrial farming changed the food, and they wanted to do something about it. There was one guy, Rudolph Steiner, who brought up an idea about how farming should work, and that was biodynamic farming. It was the first kind of logo of ‘organic’. There are two main things — one is that we’re trying to be circular. We have the animals that supply fertility, and the fertility grows all of the feed for the animals, and a little bit extra, which is, in our case, cash crops and vegetables. We try to be as closed-loop as possible. We cannot expand our land base without increasing our animals, because we wouldn’t have fertility. We’re trying to build a little ecosystem.”
Right now, the crop Erik is most enjoying growing is red beets, which is great, because they’re currently growing 10 acres of them. That’s 120 tonnes of beets. They’re also growing kidney beans and flax, hard red wheat, and soybeans. But the majority of their acreage is for the goats to enjoy. Edda likes to try out different specialty crops.“For us, it makes sense to look for specialty crops, especially since we are fairly good with weed control, so we can grow crops where others might be a little scared to try.” Erik thinks this has been a great year for their farm. “Great growing conditions, great hay yields, and as far as it looks to me now, we’ll have good wheat. Can’t complain this year.”
Biodynamic farming also includes some very old-school methods when it comes to soil and crop improvement. “The other thing we do is preparations,” Edda explained. “Which, for a lot of people, is very esoteric.” This involves utilizing fermented herbs in the farming process. “It helps to harmonize the compost process, which is the base of our fertility. And we spray preparations on the crops, to help them utilize the soil better, and utilize the sun better... Biodynamics is the only form of farming that acknowledges the influence of the cosmos. With the tides, everybody knows what the moon does to the earth. In biodynamics, there are a lot of people that are very much into astronomy, and how the stars affect what happens on earth.” The astronomy element of biodynamics also inspired the name of their business. Capella (or ‘little goat’ in Latin) is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Auriga. “In fall you can see it - it’s a very bright star, and I thought it was a nice name,” Edda explained.
Erik also mixes herbs into the pasture mix for the goats, which improves the health of the herd. “Herbs have a much higher mineral spectrum,” he said. “They definitely like chicory, and plantain and trefoil. They also like curled dock, which is a weed, but they just eat it right up.”
The farm is now home to 200 milking goats, plus young stock and meat goats. The milking breed are purebred, registered French Alpines. “We’ve had them from the start,” Erik said. “We were lucky to find a whole herd, and we just kept going with them. They’re a breed that’s well-suited to what we do - with the amount of grazing we do in the summer.” The herd had never experienced life with biodynamically-minded farmers before coming to live with the Boettchers. Having so much space to graze confused the goats at first, but they eventually figured it out, with the guidance of a few borrowed sheep. The goats at Capella Meadows are also collectively afraid of water - they won’t even step across the shallowest puddle!
Both Erik and Edda obviously love their goats, but for different reasons. Edda likes their easy-going attitude. “They’re fun. Most of the days. Some days, they are the opposite of fun... but they’re also easy to handle. I can't imagine milking a stubborn cow. You can’t really do a lot when they don’t want to, because they’re so heavy.”
Erik respects the way goats live and learn together. “For me, I enjoy working with them. They seem to have that bit of intelligence - if they know the direction to go, if they know the routine, they’re quite reliable. We have a dog to help with moving them around the barn or out to pasture, but they’re quite smart animals. Which brings also the problem that they are able to figure out how to get out sometimes.”
Their current lead dog is a border collie named Roy. Roy is almost too good at his job - he has to be kept away from the goats when they don’t need any guidance. Flax, their other dog, has retired from the strenuous world of goat herding. Edda appreciates the work Roy does on the farm. “When the goats get out, then you don’t have to be running after them as much - you can just send the dog, and he will, hopefully, get them to where you want them.”
The Boettchers believe in honouring what the goats provide for them, and spend time every day working to treat them with the respect they deserve, all the way to the end. “It feels even more respectful to eat them ourselves, than it does to ship them. We try to give them a good life, and a good end... I basically don’t have any beef in the freezer. Whatever you would do with beef, I do with goat. I’m a lazy cook, I like easy recipes. So with a roast, I put it in the oven right after breakfast, and then I forget about it, and then at lunch I take it out, eat it, and that’s it. It’s very easy.” They also raise their own meat chickens for a little bit of variety, and trade cheese with Erik’s mother in exchange for eggs.
In addition to their milking goats, Capella Meadows raises about 100 meat goats each year, most of which are sold at the nearby stockyard in Brussels. One of their primary buyers is a butcher shop in Toronto, which makes sense - goat is one of the dietary staples for cultures found in countless countries from all around the world, including Sudan, Haiti, Nepal, Nigeria, Ecuador, China, Bangladesh, Mexico, Mongolia, and more. North America may be lagging behind when it comes to consuming goat meat, but it’s perhaps time to catch up - goat meat is flavourful, versatile and high in protein.
Capella Meadows hopes to start producing its own cheese on the farm as early as next spring, and Edda is very excited. “It will extend our cheese varieties... I always want to make [cheeses that are] as natural as possible. When we have our own plant, we can start experimenting with the really funky ones. I like creamy cheeses, with a little stronger flavour. In general, I don’t like really young cheeses - I prefer an older cheddar, or gouda. I like variety - at the start, we only had cheddar at home, because we only ate our own cheese.”
Once she has her own plant, the sky’s the limit for Capella Meadows. “We’re at a point where it really starts to get interesting for people,” she said. “Hopefully the cheese plant [will be completed] soon, and [we’ll start] having more varieties.” They may have only just broken ground on the facility, but the driven young cheesemaker from Düsseldorf is already dreaming of hosting cheesemaking classes and a second-storey event space. She just needs Erik to build it all first.
Until the plant opens, people can still stop by the Capella Meadows farm store for some organic cheese, meat, flour, or seasonal produce. The store is currently open Monday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. They don’t do sales on Sunday - that’s their day off. “It’s always good to have one day off and a little bit of privacy,” Edda explained. “On Sundays, we try not to work. Obviously, we have the animals, and we have to feed them in the morning. And milk them in the morning. And in the evening.”
Working so much has meant that the Boettchers haven’t had that much time to promote their business. “With the cheese, it’s just getting the word out there. We don’t get off the farm a lot!” Edda explained. “You have to get people to know you, and it takes a while. I think, the way we started, it’s not an exciting story, so people don’t really know about us.” ◊