ONOWAY, Alta. – Christine Anacker can’t imagine a life without goats.
For 36 years Anacker has raised, promoted, loved and laughed at her goats and she’s not tired of it yet.
“I want to keep doing this until the day I die. I don’t aspire to not have goats and chickens and not have chores,” said Anacker during a tour of her Conception goat farm northwest of Edmonton.
“Goats are like chips: you can’t have just one.”
What started with a single doe and two kids in 1971 grew into a lifelong passion for the friendly animals. She said she never tires of watching them leap off logs, race up hills and spin and duck with more agility than a kid on a skateboard.
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“My private personal fantasy is every farm should have at least five goats in their back yard,” said Anacker, who has reduced her herd to 17 adult dairy and meat does from a high of 70.
“It’s the greatest milk. There’s nothing better than fresh milk,” said Anacker, who hand milks two to three goats each day.
Reducing the herd and its daily workload is a way Anacker can continue to enjoy the goats. Little on the farm is mechanized. The goats are milked by hand, the stalls are cleaned with a pitchfork and wheelbarrow, hay is lifted into the loft by hand and the wood for the fire is stacked and split with little mechanization.
“Hauling everything is hard on the old body, but I don’t like mechanized stuff.”
Instead, Anacker enjoys waking up each morning and having the freedom to choose her schedule.
She can make bread and soup, fix fences, stitch a quilt or weed the garden.
Anacker met her first husband while studying languages in France. While in Florida they got a call from his old college roommate who said that a group was starting a commune near Onoway and invited them to join.
In 1970 they bought a school bus, found Onoway on the map and headed north.
The couple only lasted a month living in the commune, but loved the area and bought 110 acres nearby. With the help of friends from the commune they built a 270 sq. metre A-frame house and Anacker’s life on the land began with chickens, goats and sheep and eventually, five children.
In 1977 Anacker married her second husband John Vivier, whom she credits as the key to creating a farm out of the bush. Vivier reseeded the pasture, built a proper barn and began a hay business.
“John is the driving force behind this becoming a successful farm,” said Anacker, who admits she would still be making do with granaries dragged in from a farm auction without her husband.
“He’s been instrumental in making it a roaring, going-on event,” she said.
“He’s the hay man, I’m the goat lady.”
Anacker has tried her hand at milking a cow to make butter, but when the cow kicked her and the milk pail, she sold the cow and went back to her goats.
Throughout the years she travelled to goat shows and sales to promote her goats and the industry. When Boer goats became a popular meat breed, she promoted them as meat goats.
“When we got into Boer goats, we thought it was the next hot market and it was – but it bombed,” said Anacker.
She can reel off the lineage of each of her goats. Some can be traced back to the original goats 36 years ago.
When many farmers have hung up their milk pails and opted to buy their milk at the grocery store, Anacker refuses to sacrifice fresh milk for convenience.
“I still love to milk.”
