A walk in the (goat) park
Farmer’s cashmere goats tend to both the land and the heart
By KELLY JASPER
Northern Augusta Journal (Harrisonburg, Va.)
Past the mud room, from the steps of his back stoop, Kevin Hoschar surveys his land and smiles.
The 15-acres roll across the countryside just south of Mount Sidney. “It’s like a park,” he says. Even through a late-December chill, the pastures are green and well-kept. The goats keep it that way.
For four years, Hoschar has tended 40 cashmere goats. His farm, Bonny Venture, sells doelings and bucklings as well as the cashmere combed from their hair each winter.
From the back stoop, Hoschar walks a muddy, hay-strewn path toward a kidding stall to visit a brood of 3-month-olds. Already, all of the unborn 2005 crop are spoken for, he says. A waiting list is available for 2006. Outside the towering dome that covers the pen, a doe passes through: the pasture in sight of its kid. A midnight-black buckling bleats a long “me-e-e-e-eh!”
Immediately, another buckling bleats a slow, rumbling chord ─ not at its mother, but at B.C., the barn cat that patrols the pens. Out in front of the house, a rooster echoes back. With more than 20 chickens, the farm, while serene, is far from silent.
Hoschar smiles and slides his fingers in the lattice-like wire cages. He loves the farm life.
“Sometimes I’ll go in here and lay down for 10 or 15 minutes and let them jump on me,” he says of the kids. “The lifestyle is very peaceful and pastoral.”
It also makes a lot of sense, he says. As a business consultant who travels nine months out of the year, Hoschar doesn’t want a cell phone or TV to detract from the lifestyle the farm offers. “Hotel rooms all look the same,” Hoschar says. “I come here, and this place is just a sanctuary.”
B.C. rubs against his ankle, then balances his whole weight atop the toes of Hoschar’s muddy boots, which are tucked under baggy, inky blue Levi’s. He wears a red-and-green plaid button-down, tortoise-shell I frames and a short salt-and-pepper beard.
Hoschar talks softly but laughs loudly, letting out a chuckle and then a sigh as the 3-month-old Loretta Lynn stretches her black hoofs on a fence post. The light silver doeling will likely produce silver cashmere, which is more rare than the tawny khaki or creamy charcoal of most goats.
Behind the kidding pen, down another hay-strewn path, a heard of does graze.
Hoschar grabs a bucket of feed, and at the rain-like sound of food pellets falling into plastic bins, a dozen does charge down the pasture’s hillside.
He reaches out for Tammy Wynette.
Each season, the goats are named in theme. She’s one of about 20 who bear the names of classic country singers. The themes, Hoschar says, simplify tracking the age and genealogy of each goat. Past breeds have drawn upon famous comedians and the season’s disastrous hurricanes. Rock and roll stars may be up next.
Tammy is a young doe, one of his favorites. “She’s just a little precocious, intelligent, steal-your-heart kind of goat,” he says. And she is bound to have luxurious cashmere, too.
“Think of the softest thing you’ve ever put your hands on,” he says, grasping her by the horns and straddling her as she neared the feed. Tammy’s body squirms under his grip. She’s a foot away and just out of reach from the feeding bins, now filled with a stock mix that complements the goat’s regular rough hay diet.
Hoschar runs a hand across Tammy’s crimped, cream fur and combs away a few strands of cashmere. He releases her to the herd.
“She’s a little puffball, like cotton, but softer,” he says as he twirls the strands between his fingers.
Cashmere can come from any breed of goat, he says. But in order for the cashmere to really be cashmere, the fibers must be at least 1 and a half inches long with a fiber micron count of 14 to 20, a measure of diameter.
Bonny Venture’s goats average a count of 16, in part because of line breeding.
The process produces consistent characteristics in the goats, lending consistent characteristics to the cashmere.
Hoschar learned the common technique when he started the farm with Amy Hoschar in 2001. The original goats were purchased in 2001 from Rosalie and Gene Pendergrast, two of the first people in the United States to import Australian cashmere stock.
The goats will be combed in February, March and April. But now, it’s breeding season.
Catty-corner to the pasture, three breeding pens each house a buck and two does for weeks on end as Hoschar charts their interaction. Twice a year, the total herd usually births multiple sets of twins and sometimes triplets.
In one pen, 200-pound Tim Conway bucks into the air to guard his does against Hoschar’s presence.
He laughs and suggests he should have brought Twizzlers. The goats love the sweet licorice, though Christmas trees are their favorite treat. After the holidays, Hoschar collects disposed cedars and conifers.
Still, the goat is harmless, Hoschar says turning away from Timmy but always keeping one eye on the buck. “That’s a challenge move, but I’m not going to challenge him. This isn’t a Mountain Dew commercial.”
Again, Timmy bucks. Hoschar laughs, a rooster crows, a doe grazes and a kid bleats. A true sanctuary.
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