Angeles Crest Creamery

We moved to this property in 2014 with a herd of goats to learn how to make food in the arid Southern California mountains while preserving the most threatened resources—water and soil. We weren't inventing a new form of agriculture, but rather learning to practice human's earliest methods of managing land in partnership with ruminants. The goats have been great teachers, and we have learned together over these years how the land, native plants, wildlife, livestock and humans can work together to benefit all.

When we evacuated with our goats on Friday September 18, 2020, due to the approaching Bobcat Fire, we had no idea what our future would hold. As the Bobcat Fire tore through our property on Saturday, we watched on our security cameras until we lost power. Coming back to the ranch a week later, we found some remaining patches of Pinyon-Juniper Woodland and chaparral, but also a lot of moonscape where the fire had burned through intensely and left no forage for the goats.

Fire is a natural part of this landscape, and now it's necessarily part of our project. The support of Patrons will allow us to spend sufficient time to study, document and share as we learn and adjust our agriculture, in addition to helping us manage the feed bill so we can keep the goats off of the land while it's reestablishing. Most of us did not learn fire ecology in school, and its relationship to traditional forms of food production is even more of a niche, but it is becoming a critical area of knowledge for everyone who cares about our remaining wilderness, especially in the mountain West, and how we make food in our changing world.