Welcome to the Meadow
When we first laid eyes on this fixer-upper acreage, it needed a lot of love. The first time we stepped foot on the property, our realtor honestly greeted us with, "Well, the house ain't much."
That didn't scare us.
Besides remodeling the entire inside of the house, we have overhauled the rest of the property as well. We ripped out all of the old perimeter fence, cleaned up the small landfill of old diapers and broken bottles from the far corner of the pasture and built new horse fence. And, when we put in that new horse fence, we made sure to make it goat compatible because we knew that goats were in our future.
The main pasture is now completely free of diapers and flanked by mature trees and 75+ recently established fruit, oak and cypress seedlings. It gives a meadow vibe.
During the pandemic in 2020, we thought about getting a dog, one of the few animals not represented at Monarch Meadow Farm. We quickly realized that quarantine would be the best time to start our herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats. After weeks of searching, we brought home May and Ellie, two lovely does from nice dairy lines. We also jumped head first into artificial insemination and brought on two bucks from Dill's dairy farm in Oklahoma in order to expand our operation.
We are members of and our goats are registered in the American Dairy Goat Association. We intend to breed for milk production, conformation, disposition, and show, as well as participate in linear appraisal and milk test. We plan to keep our herd small and produce and sell excellent kids. If we sell an adult, we will always be open and honest about our reasons. You can link to our sales page here and read about our herd management practices here.
Since we have spent so much time in France over the years, we love love love goat cheese. Aside from strong, beautiful, no nonsense and healthy goats, wonderful cheese is our dairy farm goal, and we also dabble in soap.
Our Name
How did our name come to be? In short, we just love monarchs and meadows.
But there is more to it. I hope I get the chance to tell you over coffee all of the reasons that monarchs and meadows have been important to us in different ways over the years. The most obvious reason for our name is that we have worked to make our farm a magnet for monarch butterflies and their pollinator friends. All sorts of pollinators regularly flit through our property. We see monarchs, of course, but also swallowtails, red admirals, painted ladies and many types of bees. We particularly love the green metallic bees that burrow holes and live in the ground. Watching monarchs go from milkweed to milkweed and catching glimpses of a chrysalis forming is awesome, but when monarchs come through during their fall migration, it is truly magical.
There could not be a more fitting name for this place and our herd than Monarch Meadow.