About 25 heifers can be found in behind the Hughsons’ brand new barn near Chaffey’s Locks. And by all expectations, that number will grow to around 80 some time this winter.

But as smoothly as the business of custom raising heifers seems to be going, it wasn’t at all what Holly and Dave envisioned they’d be doing with the barn.

"We really had it in our heads we were going to do the cheese business," says Holly, who until recently was certain she and Dave would be raising goats on their 112-acre farm.

Standing with her five remaining goats, "just pets now," Holly talks about the rocky road she and her husband have traveled over the past 10 years in their efforts to be full-time goat farmers.

She says they started with two in 1989 and within six years, were up to a herd of "more than 300." For a while they were able to sell the milk to a local dairy at 55 cents a litre but then for different reasons, says Holly, that arrangement came to an end.

Along the way, Holly says they continually came up against new hurdles, even though they had studied the industry before starting up."We looked at other operations, talked to other people, but we really didn’t have a feel for it.

"Our first kid crop we lost almost every kid," says Holly, recalling that they later determined the milk replacer they were using was too rich. And there were other problems which she figures could only have been avoided through experience. For example, when they bought goats from different herds they discovered they had also brought in a disease. It wasn’t fatal, says Holly, but it was enough to cut down on milk production for a while.

Overall, she says, production was a problem. She says when she and Dave made the decision to milk, they started adding to the original two hobby goats. "We bought a herd of 60 and then bought another half a dozen and then found out we still didn’t have enough milk."

Dave says there were times in the first year when there wasn’t even enough milk to fill their 300-gallon tank. He says that based on research, they expected the average goat to produce 2.5 litres a day. The reality, he says, was more like "a litre to a litre and a half." With such low quantities, they faced the prospect of the milk freezing in the tank, and, worse, not having enough to ship to the dairy. "It takes so many litres of milk to produce cheese," says Dave, adding there were many occasions when they just couldn’t make enough.

He and Holly both admit they originally bought too many yearlings and realized too late they should have had a better balance of older, higher producing goats.

In the midst of their struggle to keep afloat, Holly says news came of a new dairy opening up nearby. She and the owner, Debbie Hutchings, began talking about using the Hughsons’ milk for goat cheese on a regular basis. Holly says for a while, the idea gave them hope. But it, too, was destined not to work out.

Since April, Hutchings has been producing, marketing and selling cheese made from sheep’s milk through her Little Rideau Lake Cheese company. She recently opened a shop in Westport under the company name and is successfully selling the cheese through wholesale and various grocery stores. The next step, says Hutchings, is to open a dairy where she would process both sheep and goat’s milk She says if the Hughsons hadn’t been dealing with other problems, and could have held on for another year, the two parties could have established an excellent partnership.

"The timing was wrong for what they were doing," says Hutchings. "I think if they were doing it right now, it would be OK ... If Holly was to start milking goats again, I would take her milk."

Hutchings says back when she was talking with the Hughsons about opening up a dairy, there was still a lot of work to be done before she could get a licence. She says the project is now much closer to being a reality. She and a partner are looking at a property in Portland and feel they have a good chance of getting the dairy off the ground.

But for Holly and Dave, the idea of a dairy which would take their milk, make it into cheese and possibly sell the end product, was just one more plan that didn’t yet have a firm foundation. In the end it was a risk they couldn’t afford to take. Holly says, financially, there didn’t seem to be any alternatives left besides selling the

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goats. Luckily, she adds, there was a goat farm interested in buying the whole herd.

"We had built the new barn and we just couldn’t

see any hope. The future was so uncertain. And here was this person willing to take it all off our hands - it was hard to say no."

Looking back, Holly says she and Dave learned a lot of lessons, mistakes that were costly at the time but which taught them eventually how to be better farmers. "The first year was the roughest but by the second year it was ‘hey, we know what we’re doing now.’ If we did it again, we’d know what to do and what not to do."

Dave says that by the end they were producing "lots of milk," but by then it was too late. He says he’s not closing any doors to the possibility of raising goats again in the future. "I still believe, I will always believe, there’s a market out there for the goat." Dave adds there’s a thriving goat industry in Western Ontario, a trend which hasn’t yet caught on in the eastern part of the province.

For her part, Holly thinks that if they had built up the business a little more slowly, they might have had a chance. She, too, isn’t prepared to say goodbye to the idea of goat farming. But for the time being she’s happy having five goats as pets.

"At this point I think I’m ready to take a break for a while."