When Isabelle Harper was suffering from postpartum depression, it was her goat who got her through.
Daisy, the Nigerian Dwarf Goat was there when she was pregnant with her daughter Adaleigh and after her baby was born. Daisy forced her into the fresh air, helping her recover mentally and physically.
“After Adaleigh was born, Daisy really helped me get my bearings back. She helped me get outside because I needed to take care of her,” Harper, 32, said. “When you have a baby you get stuck in a rut and she helped me get out of it and made me feel like I wasn’t just a mom, that I can do other things too.”
The experience led Harper to buy more goats, as well as pigs, sheep, quail, chickens and rabbits, turning their property on Highway 24 into a hobby farm. When her husband Andrew lost his job at the West Fraser Chasm mill in 2019 they sold their home, with plans to move to Chetwynd, where he’d found new work at the sulfur plant. They were left in the lurch, however, after a strike at the plant and Andrew was let go.
With no place to go and house prices skyrocketing, Harper said theyr moved in with her parents on Watch Lake Road in 2020. It meant a lot to her, she said, as “basically a farm just plopped onto their property.” She set her goats up in her father’s shop and built an enclosure for her other animals.
The arrangement was meant to be temporary but that changed after Andrew got a job at West Fraser in 100 Mile. At the same time, Harper said her parents loved spending time with their granddaughter and the animals.
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When she raised the idea of a goat dairy farm at dinner one night, the entire family decided to undertake the project.
“I was never able to fully fund my barn because it would have cost me over $300,000 probably but my parents said ‘let’s go halfers on this and build something together,’” Harper said.
Harper said she first began milking her goats because she heard that the milk of Nigerian dwarf goats is particularly rich in fat. She loved the taste and began regularly milking them for milk and to make cheese. Last summer, she came up with a plan for her own dairy so she could legally sell the products in the community.
“I don’t know if it’s something I’ll make a ton of money doing but it’s something I feel I’d be happy doing.”
The family plans to build a barn large enough to house the animals, a milking parlour and a processing room.
Harper said she’ll also need to buy her own pasteurizer, a chiller, a vacuum system to transport the milk between the two, a bottler and a stainless steel kitchen to work in. She intends to upgrade her pumps so she can milk two goats at a time, rather than just one.
The process to get fully certified and approved won’t happen overnight, but Harper said she’s excited about the future.
“You don’t know yourself until you push yourself to the limits and I’ve learned a lot about myself doing all this farming stuff. It’s made me healthier as a person and to feel accomplished in my life,” Harper said. “ (For a long time) I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and I was a very depressed person. Now I feel a lot more at peace and content with my life, that’s for sure.”
patrick.davies@100milefreepress.net
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