By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

MILLERSBURG, Ky. — Todd Harp grew up on a dairy farm, so rising early to complete his milking duties is second nature to him. The thing that sets him apart isn’t how he does it, but what he milks.
Harp raises and milks dairy goats. In fact, the state’s first-ever commercial shipment of goat’s milk recently left his farm on its way to the only certified goat milk processor in the state.

Harp’s love of interacting with animals has served him well since the days of tobacco crops and cows. “I learned very quickly that the best way to get out of the tobacco patch was to milk,” he said. “Not that milking is easier than tobacco, but I liked interacting with a live animal.”

But a love for animals usually won’t pay the bills, and Harp needed to find a less expensive “herd” once he graduated from college. That is where the goats first came into play, in 2001.

After growing the herd to the point of being able to milk, Harp soon realized there was no place to send it. In fact, he discovered most producers who milked goats simply dumped it.

“Me being a penny pincher, I thought ‘that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,’” stated Harp. “Here is a perfectly good product that costs time and money to produce, and people were just throwing it away.”

Rather than continue to throw it out, he began to use the milk as a way to feed calves while he searched for a market. That market would prove to be closer than Harp thought.

Susan Miller from nearby Clark County, along with her husband, already owned a farm and after attending the “New England Cheese Trail” and later a cheese-making workshop, she decided to get into the goat cheese business. The one thing stopping her was she couldn’t find a licensed goat dairy producer in the state, so she decided to get her own for the sole purpose of using the milk for her cheese-making endeavors.

In search of help to do this, Miller met Harp through a mutual friend – and the rest, as they say, is history. The two were a match, since Miller’s love was making cheese and Harp enjoyed the milking side of the business.

“When Susan said she wanted to make cheese, I thought it was funny, because all I wanted to do was goats,” explained Harp. “From that day we began working together on this idea of me producing the milk, and Susan making the cheese.”

Early in 2003 the two met with the Milk Safety Branch (MSB) to find out what was needed to develop a licensed milking facility for goats. Harp’s experience in the dairy business helped in working with MSB representatives.

“Goats are so much smaller than cows that everything from the manure issues to the milking equipment needs had to be scaled back from a traditional cow operation,” he said.

The next five years were filled with a lot of frustration, he said. There were issues to face since no one had set up this type of operation in the state before.

“The MSB wanted to hold us to the highest standards because there were people that were going to follow us,” said Harp.

One of the main obstacles was to figure out how to haul the milk from Harp’s farm to Miller. They entertained the idea of using old-fashioned milk cans. The 20 does he milks produce far less than that of a score of 1,800-pound Holstein heifers. But Miller modified a 100-gallon Mueller milk tank to solve that problem.

“There were some kinks along the way that had to be worked out, and I think she would agree there were times we thought we would never get here, but now that we are, it almost seems unreal,” he said.

Of course, the real test is in the final product, and Harp said that so far each time Miller heads to the Lexington Farmers’ Market, she sells out.

“We went from pouring the milk out and killing the grass to having the goats paying their own way,” said Harp. “We are in a unique situation right now. Unfortunately, many times farmers have been price takers, but we are fortunate enough right now to be at the point of being price makers.”

Harp said there have been times when he didn’t know where his operation fit into the agriculture picture, but his ultimate goal is to make his goat dairy business full-time. He currently works as a policy analyst with the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy.
For now, however, he is content to enjoy the fact that his dairy goats are getting the respect they deserve.