The thieves got here in the course of the night time with wire cutters, snipping via the fence and trampling via a brush of stinging nettle. Their goal? A pen of goats, a few of them pregnant and others that had simply given beginning.
“They took the tamest, nicest goats that may have come as much as them,” stated Dan Drake, the proprietor of Drake Household Farms in Ontario. The burglars had totally cased the joint earlier than pulling off their heist on the night time of April 15, once they carted off 12 of his farm’s 500 goats — together with his kids’s beloved pet, Nova.
Drake’s goats have been straightforward marks. Goats can’t do a lot injury with a chew (they don’t have incisors on their higher jaw), and those on Drake’s farm had their horns burnt to cease them from rising. Missing pure weapons of their very own, his domesticated goats relied on two Nice Pyrenees canines to defend in opposition to hungry predators. However the artful robbers in some way knew that the canines couldn’t attain the a part of the farmstead the place they have been breaking in.
“They took one in every of my favourite goats that I might by no means promote for even $12,000,” he sobbed over the telephone. Drake suspects that one goat who was affected by being pregnant toxemia is lengthy useless as a result of she didn’t obtain the medication she wanted the subsequent morning.
The Drakes filed a report on the Ontario Police Division and are providing a $3,500 reward within the hopes that the goats would possibly nonetheless be discovered. Thus far, although, the efforts have been unavailing.
Some individuals have despatched photos of goats wandering of their neighborhood, pondering they’ve discovered the stolen animals. However they aren’t the Drakes’, stated Dan’s spouse, Kim, explaining that their animals are properly saved and clear. “I do know instantly they’re not our goats… they’re not shaggy,” she stated.
Nor have the goats turned up at any of the native dairies or at a slaughterhouse, stated Det. Michael Williams, who’s been investigating this suspected case of grand larceny.
That is simply the most recent chapter within the lengthy uphill battle Drake has confronted since 2010 to maintain his dairy farm within the Inland Empire afloat. Drake cares for about 200 dairy cows a day via his livestock veterinarian observe, and over time he has poured tens of hundreds of {dollars} from his job into making what he claims is the perfect goat cheese within the nation.
“He’ll let you know he’s hooked on [goats],” stated Kim, who works as a nurse practitioner when she isn’t caring for his or her three kids. “That’s [Drake’s] calling, I obtained sucked into it.” Kim Drake estimates that her husband works round 120 hours every week managing two companies directly.
Dan Drake, whose pores and skin is sun-kissed purple by the various hours he’s spent working outside, will get dreamy-eyed each time he talks about his devotion to goats. He’s a part of a shrinking inhabitants of Individuals who nonetheless name farming a occupation. His household has been goatherders for generations because the Eighties in Salt Lake County, Utah, the place their authentic farm nonetheless stands.
He was solely 13 years outdated when he registered his first goat with the American Dairy Goat Assn. — and he was instantly hooked. “Perceive I’m like a cat girl, that’s me, however I’ve goats,” stated Drake, who is aware of nearly each single one in every of his 500 goats by title.
Drake’s enterprise is one in every of 42 remaining goat farms licensed by the California Division of Meals and Agriculture to provide dairy merchandise, and the theft final week has put it into an much more financially precarious state.
Their enterprise was lastly within the black after Mendocino Farms partnered with the Drakes to make an entrée referred to as “Save Drake Farms Salad” that paid off all their money owed, however the pandemic reversed their fortunes.
“COVID killed us,” Drake stated. “Most of our cheeses offered in high-end eating places, and so they have been all closed for months.”
After COVID, Mendocino Farms ended its partnership with the Drakes to save cash, he stated, and so they needed to scramble to discover a new associate, Sweetgreen. Confronted with looming closure, Drake simply couldn’t pull the plug on his ardour venture, though it takes about $600,000 a 12 months in complete to run his farmstead and Sweetgreen makes up solely about $400,000 in purchases.
The Drakes attempt to make up the remaining by promoting cheese at farmers markets and their farm, the place additionally they supply goat petting, excursions with cheese tastings. Drake additionally sells male goats to households to eat, however he doesn’t butcher any of the animals himself.
The important thing to creating nice cheese is straightforward for Drake: Preserve your goats comfortable and clear. “There’s some actually nastytasting goat cheese on the planet,” Drake stated whereas giving a tour of the milking station.
Goats, like cows, should be milked twice a day, however Drake stated most locations don’t comply with the identical rigorous schedule as his enterprise does. “There’s no cleansing…there’s no checking, you simply get what you get. And that’s why the cheese tastes horrible,” he stated.
He spends round $16,000 a month on 50 tons of high-quality alfalfa hay for his livestock. “Once we take plenty of additional time and we double our expense and labor … then that comes again to us in a high quality product,” stated Drake, who famous that his farm has Licensed Humane standing. Contemplating how a lot labor he places into the farm, generally it isn’t clear whether or not Drake’s working for the goats or in the event that they’re working for him.
However the latest setbacks haven’t deterred him from dreaming. “I need to have a regenerative farm that really enhances the setting, doesn’t take away from it,” he stated.
He’ll be shifting quickly to a a lot bigger plot of land in Riverside County, the place he hopes to chop prices by putting in a battery or photo voltaic panel that would assist fight Edison’s summertime surge pricing for electrical energy. And he’s realizing he can faucet into the agriculture tourism trade {dollars} by providing extra academic excursions of the farm.
Drake stated he’s confronted many robust instances within the enterprise when the rational factor to do would have been to close it down. However he’s by no means had the guts to tug the plug.
He and his spouse additionally see the farm as a type of public service. In line with Kim Drake, individuals who go to the farm depart feeling extra deeply related with nature because the supply of their meals.
In Drake’s petting zoo, households and kids are everywhere in the goats, which wander individual to individual trying to find snacks and a focus. Jennifer Sleeper, a trauma therapist, simply occurred to be cuddling a new child goat whose mom was one of many dozen taken.
“[This] is the happiest I’ve ever been in a very long time,” stated Sleeper because the orphaned child lounged peacefully in her lap and one other sucked her finger, hungry for milk.
Sleeper is a pescatarian, however the Drake Household Farm’s cheese is one she’s going to eat as a result of she sees the moral sourcing that goes into it. “I believe it’s actually good to assist locations like this,” stated the Venice resident of the farm that’s one in every of solely two goat dairy operations in Southern California, the opposite being in San Luis Obispo County. She hopes to volunteer even when the farmstead strikes farther out in Riverside County.
“The cheese,” she added, “is simply scrumptious.”
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