2.5
September 6, 2008

The death of Boulder, Colorado’s last dairy farm: Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy no longer local; sells off its goats.

I’m (not particularly) a Local.

Oh, don’t you worry, you can still find Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy‘s incredible Peak, Red Cloud, Snowdrop, Queso de Mano, chevre and other cheeses—but they’re now shipping in their goat milk, founder Jim Schott (who we profiled back in the day) is on the board, no longer in the field, they’ve sold off their goats…I don’t know much more, bc there’s little in the news about it.

I remember visiting the Dairy a few years back. We profiled Jim in elephant magazine, full page. We took a ton of photos. The goats were cute as could be, and Haystack was just then beginning its remarkable success story that, financially at least, continues to this day. But even then the pressures of running a dairy in high-priced Boulder County were immense; Jim was at that time looking for more acreage, and couldn’t afford to buy of course. I know he’s now taken on a CEO and other investors—and I’m sure it’s they who made the sad (“pragmatic,” they’ll call it) decisions to send Jim’s goats away to god knows where.

And so our food ecosystem’s diversity continues to shrink—just two days ago I was struck by the fact that, shopping at Whole Foods, I could only find one non-store-brand organic cheese company, Organic Valley, who offered a range of cheddars, Swiss, Feta and such at anything approaching a reasonable price. And this in Whole Foods, the epicenter of organic. And this in Boulder, Whole Foods’ second-best grossing store in the country (after Manhattan).

This is no more:

Haystack Goat Dairy – Longmont, CO from Foodzie on Vimeo.

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