CAYLEY, Alta. – A heavenly smell issues from Judy Meyers’ goat farm.
Instead of the usual farmyard smells, her farm is heavy with the aroma of chocolate fudge bubbling in her kitchen.
Meyers and her husband, Dory Tuvim, are eastern transplants who always wanted to farm.
They got their wish 13 years ago in Quebec when they started raising and milking dairy goats. They ultimately expanded the milk business into a fudge and syrup enterprise.
The goat business came by happenstance.
Their first goat was a doe named Sara, who was presented as a surprise 50th birthday gift to Tuvim. He wanted goat’s milk and they soon had plenty. Meyers came up with the idea of selling fancy fudges and sauces and they eventually developed a product line called Sweet Sara Gourmet Products.
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Since then they have kept a descendent of Sara on the farm.
They moved to the Alberta foothills in search of a retirement spot. A trail ride in the Rockies was Tuvim’s 60th birthday gift. After a week in Alberta, the two easterners decided it was the place to be.
“It’s beautiful being able to see forever. I just love it,” Meyers said as she watched her goats browse in a prairie pasture.
Tuvim was in the Israeli merchant marine and loves the Prairies because it reminds him of the sea. As his wife says “You can see forever and it’s rolling like the sea.”
They moved goats, dogs, horses and Tuvim’s container business to a quarter section farm west of Cayley.
Before the move in May 1997, Meyers had only seen a video of the farm and buildings. She wasn’t concerned about the house. Her priorities were proper barns and corrals for her goats.
The farm was a good buy. Not only did they get a view of prairie rolling into the mountains, but they also got the barns and corrals that came with the former Boer goat farm. And the neighbors have been welcoming.
“We’ve had a wonderful time here. Everyone is so friendly and we’ve become really good friends with the neighbors,” she said.
While they have an assortment of farm animals, the mainstay of the farm is a herd of 40 registered Nubian goats that are milked by machine every day.
On weekends, the milk is separated and the cream is made into butter that goes into the fudge.
The goats each produce 20 litres of milk per day when they are in full lactation. The milk then goes to a commercial kitchen next to their house.
There, cook Shannon Loeffler makes gourmet fudges and specialty sauces. Meyers sells the product to gift packagers, specialty stores and gourmet shops.
She admits she needed a cook to make her products a success.
“You have to have a feel for it. I could follow a recipe but if I had any variations like humidity or weather, I didn’t have a clue.”
It takes about three hours to make a batch of fudge that is then packaged.
It didn’t take them long to discover that not all of the syrups and fudges popular in Quebec were acceptable to western tastebuds. Some ingredients were changed and the products started to sell again.
Meyers also found the higher altitude and drier climate affected the cooking and quality of the treats. After considerable experimentation, she and Loeffler figured out how to get the fudge to set and prevent crystals forming in the sauces.
Having mastered western cooking requirements and western tastes, she is making inroads in gift shops and gourmet outlets.
“My biggest market is the Christmas gift period. October, November, December I sell tons,” she said. Things pick up again between May and September for the gift stores’ tourist market.
She hopes to take the business of gourmet treats as far as she can and expansion is a possibility.
Meyers bought 12 more females this year. The does often have twins or triplets and this year most of them were bucks. They go to a butcher in Nanton, Alta., who sells the meat to the ethnic market.
