Boonville’s Penny Royal Farm is the place to go if you have a soft spot for goats. Here you can visit with Kismet, Ducati, Lady Bug, Vesper, Sandalwood, Zephyr, Jinx, Albion and Ziti and many others. There are about 100 goats and they all have names.
In an interview with a Shepherd who watches his flocks in the hills of Sardinia they asked how he remembered the names of all his goats (also around 100) and he said, “Don’t you remember the names of your children?” Erica McKenzie, mistress of the goats and head cheese maker at Penny Royal, knows all the goats intimately; she was probably present at the birth of most of them and she definitely knows all their names.
If you take their Farm Tour, which is by reservation at 10:30 and 2:30 each day, your guide will introduce you to many of the goats. They are sociable and like to be petted. They are curious and will check you out closely. Our tour guide Jamie obviously is very fond of all the animals on the farm. A photographer, he told us he likes to take pictures (glamour shots?) of the goats during the “Golden Hour” as day fades into night when everything including the goats looks most beautiful.
The entire farm is easy on the eye. All the buildings and the layout of the grounds were designed with discriminating taste. It seems they were able to do things just as they wanted to without much compromise right down to the stainless steel changing table for babies in the bathroom. (No tacky plastic anywhere.) What a pleasure.
The Creamery where they actually make their cheese has window walls throughout so that you can see exactly what is going on and also how impeccably clean everything is. The milking barn is compact but seems to be just right for the number of goats that are milked together. Jamie told us that they like their routine and position themselves on the milking platforms with no complaint. They are especially fond of the sweet molasses grain they are fed while being milked. When they aren’t being milked they eat alfalfa all day, which is high in protein and much more delicious than plain hay. They are milked at 5 AM and 5 PM, so if you want to see them on the platforms you have to be there at the very end of the day.
The main barn is where the majority of the female goats hang out. It is kind of a “Goatel.” (See below.) They lie or stand eating or playing, watching the people come in and out. They have very intelligent expressions and are pretty darn appealing.
In the winter all the younger goats are on maternity leave. Fifteen of the young goats will have their first babies this year. When their babies are born the early milk with the colostrum is captured and bottle-fed to give their immune systems a good start. They are bottle fed by people until they are old enough to eat solid food just like human infants. The milk the mothers produce is diverted to make the cheese we all love so much. The youngest goats are kept together with their same age groups much like our kindergarteners or first graders might be. Later when they are part of the milk-producing herd they join the larger group in the Goatel.
There are three types of goats represented in the barn: La Manchas with little nubbin ears and lots of milk, the Alpines which fall somewhere in the middle and the Nubians which have big ears like a bloodhound, no beards and produce less milk but of a higher quality. There are also sheep on the farm that contribute their milk to the mix. Sheep milk is richer than goat milk but they produce about half as much volume.
The Creamery makes hard cheese, blue cheese, chevre (soft cheese) and a Brie style cheese. All the cheeses have names associated with the “Boontling” language making them very unique in the marketplace. Two name examples would be Boont Corners and Bollie’s Mollies. You can look online for the full array of cheeses and their creative names. While the cheese not inexpensive it is of the highest quality and clearly the making of it is extremely labor intensive. The process is all by hand, no pumping. Transfer is by hoist, gravity and large shovels. Everything is spotless which means a lot of time is spent just constantly cleaning.
One place where fastidiousness takes a back seat is the “Gentleman’s Club” where the male goats (the Billys) live. Approaching their barn you start to smell something kind of like goat cheese but as you get closer it really ramps up to major stinky proportions. The whole male goat world is the opposite of subtle. They are big, broadchested, aggressive, ready for action. Let’s just say they have a reputation.
We were told that when they mate with the females the sure sign of a successful mating is when the male’s head snaps back. Done and done.
Also interesting to see are the culinary gardens where I spied turnips, kale, Brussels sprouts, chives, strawberries, artichoke, onions, cilantro, parsley, cabbage, rosemary, lavender, calendula, salvias and butterfly bushes. The vineyard and the winemaking operation are beyond the scope of this article but the wine is delicate and absolutely delicious with the cheeses.
At the tasting after the tour we were given glasses of Sauvignon Blanc, Rose, and Pinot Noir with a small board of goodies including peeled and salted roasted almonds, crackers, quince paste, pinot cured cherries, and dried apple along with Laychee (Boontling for milk) a soft sweet and sour cheese, Boont Corners and Bollie’s Mollies.
Everything was so good I had to resist the urge to lick the board at the end. The food and wine parings were spot on. By the way, the farm is currently looking for a full-time chef to assemble these yummy boards along with other food offerings so if cheese (or wine, or both) is your thing drop on in to the winery and fill out an application.
Much more detail about the entire operation and its history can be found on their website: pennyroyalfarm.com.
Penny Royal Farms is located at 14930 Highway 128. Boonville CA. (707) 895-2410
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