Goats in America: A Cultural History with Author Tami Parr

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Description

If you’ve ever wondered how goats went from being banned in colonies to beloved on social media, this episode is for you! 

In this episode of For the Love of Goats, host Deborah Niemann talks with Tami Parr, author of Goats in America: A Cultural History  (As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases), about how goats have shaped — and been shaped by — American society for over 400 years.

Tami shares how her background as a cheese writer and historian led her to explore the surprising role of goats in U.S. history — from being despised agricultural “troublemakers” in the 1600s to starring in today’s goat yoga classes and artisan cheese shops. She also explains how perceptions of goat milk shifted during the tuberculosis outbreaks of the 19th century, leading to a complete transformation in how Americans viewed goats and dairy. 

Whether you raise goats, love history, or are simply curious about how these resilient animals earned their place in American culture, this episode offers a fascinating journey through time — full of unexpected stories, social change, and a few laughs along the way.

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Transcript

Intro  0:03 
For the love of goats, we are talking about everything goat, whether you're a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures. We've got you covered. And now here's Deborah Niemann,

Deborah Niemann  0:18 
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode. I have been a history buff my whole life, and in all the courses I took in American history and English history and world history, never occurred to me that there was such a thing as a history of animals. So this is going to be extra fun for me today. We are joined today by Tami Parr, who is the author of Goats in America, a cultural history. Welcome to the show today Tami.

Tami Parr  0:44 
Thanks, Deborah. Thanks for having me. This is really fun.

Deborah Niemann  0:47 
Yeah, this is fun. I am so excited. So let's start at the beginning, like, Well, how did you get interested in goats?

Tami Parr  0:54 
Well, I mean, it's a little bit of a story. I started out kind of in the early 2000’s I started writing a blog called Pacific Northwest Cheese Project. And it was something I did kind of as a hobby back when blogs were kind of cool, and before Facebook and everything else, if there was such a time. And I read it about, sort of the artisan cheese making scene that was happening in the Pacific Northwest. I live in Portland, so Portland, Oregon.

Tami Parr  1:16 
The Northwest cheese scene at the time was just exploding, and people were starting small farms and making cheese and all this kind of stuff. So I started writing about that. People asked me to write articles about it. I started becoming the sort of default expert on artisan cheese in the region. And as part of that, I spent a lot of time talking to cheesemakers, talking to goat farmers, talking to dairy farmers, etc, time on goat farms and all of that. And I started to become interested in not just the cheese part of it, which is like, cheese is like an object, and it's beautiful and it's tasty, but also cheeses like the land, the people, the goats, agriculture in general. It's a complex of a whole bunch of different things. And I started thinking about that, and that's kind of what I started to get interested in, is like, what is cheese? Why do we appreciate it, and all that kind of stuff. And that kind of led me down the path to this book, eventually

Deborah Niemann  2:02 
Awesome. So did you ever own goats or make cheese?

Tami Parr  2:07 
Never have owned goats or made cheese. Yeah. In fact, I often say, the more that I know about making cheese, the less I want to do it myself. You know, expensive, time consuming, hard to market, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it's really the people that have goat farms and make cheese are heroes.

Deborah Niemann  2:22 
Yeah, I know, like, especially those of us who have made cheese know how hard it is to get a really good aged cheese.

Tami Parr  2:29 
Especially aged. Yes, 100% all of the nuances of the humidity and the storage and oh my gosh, yeah. It's amazing.

Deborah Niemann  2:38 
Yeah. So you've written about cheese and dairy for quite some time. You have two books on that topic. What made you want to write about goats from a historical perspective?

Tami Parr  2:49 
My time in the cheese world, or seed or whatever you want to call it, I just started thinking about goats. And you know what about goats? What is it about goats? When we think of cheese, also milk, we think of cow's milk cheese and cow's milk as milk, the generic term for milk. And I sort of started thinking about goats, and it's like, Well, why is it different? How do we think about cows and goats differently? So I started just sort of poking around a little bit and looking at old newspaper articles and trying to see what had been written about goats in the past. And once, I started to find out how strangely despised goats were in the past century or two ago. I was just like, Whoa, what is going on here? And so then I started digging more and more, and then this whole story came out of the kind of arc, or the trajectory of goats and their reputation in America. So, I knew I had to talk about that.

Deborah Niemann  3:35 
Okay.

Tami Parr  3:35 
Here we are basically.

Deborah Niemann  3:51 
So what time period does the book cover?

Tami Parr  3:40 
The book really goes back. I kind of cut it off in terms of early American colonies, you know, 1600s to the present. So I kind of just really kind of a defined boundaries of the United States, or the early, pre United States to present day United States. I think really, you could write a multi volume set on the history of goats. I mean, honestly, from first domesticated animals, 10,000 years ago. You could write about so many things in terms of, like, Greek and Roman Empire. I mean, you could go on and on and on. So I started to kind of keep out some parameters around it, for making it easy to read, and also that's kind of where we are. It's what I'm interested in, is United States. This is where I live. This is where what I know.

Deborah Niemann  3:57 
So can you give us a quick overview of the book?

Tami Parr  4:12 
Yeah. I mean, a kind of glib summary is, you know, for many centuries, goats have been kind of used, exploited, persecuted, all kinds of things. But today we have goat yoga and children's parties with goats, baby goats attending them. And so the question I ask of the book is, how did we get here? What happened that we got from negative to positive? How did that happen? Etc. And so that's the very, very short summary, but I think it kind of encapsulates a lot.

Deborah Niemann  4:46 
Yeah, so what are some of the most surprising things that you learned about goats?

Tami Parr  4:52 
Oh, wow, so many things. Oh my gosh, like I said, just the intensely negative reputation that goats had for centuries. But also, there's a. Very key reason why goat's reputation turned around during the 19th and early 20th century based on the health of goats milk, the perceived health of goats milk. And so the fact that there was this very defined reason for the pivot of goat's reputation was kind of fascinating, and that revolved around tuberculosis and so on. So winds of reputation and opinion change, you know, in any culture. And you know, Americans are no strangers to that.

Tami Parr  5:23 
So it's fascinating the way that the goats milk became popular and considered to be a healthy alternative to infected milk. So that was amazing. And then, you know, you get into things like, I had not realized how popular goats were on communes in the 1960s and 70s. You know, there's so many great, hilarious stories of goats, people trying to milk goats on communes and so called hippies, you know, not knowing anything about goats, but being convinced that goat's milk was healthy, and trying to figure it out, you know, trying to figure out how to be self sufficient and use goats and goats milk for that end. And it's a great period of time just to read about goats, even just that period in the 60s and 70s.

Deborah Niemann  5:59 
Yeah, exactly. I know, for people who have no experience with livestock, goats are far less intimidated than cows.

Tami Parr  6:06 
Right, exactly, exactly. And I think that's why that sort of happened so and, you know, some people were successful at it, and like Mary Keehn of Cypress Grove showed she turned it into a business. And, you know, was very successful. Jennifer Bice's parents from Redwood Hill Farm, same thing. Some people that worked for, you know, but other people just sort of, like came and went on that goat thing. Yeah.

Deborah Niemann  6:24 
So you've alluded to this a little bit. But is there any particular story that stands out about goats that you want to share with us?

Tami Parr  6:32 
A couple things there are really interesting to me anyway, just because of my cheese background, the start, kind of the early start, of the cheese, what I call the commercial cheese industry in the 1980s with Laura Chenel and a lot of people think that she basically started goat cheese in America, and obviously she was very pivotal as a being in the right place, right time, in Northern California, and her partnership with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse kind of skyrocketed the reputation of goat cheese.

Tami Parr  6:57 
But there were so many goat cheese makers in the 1970s starting to pop up around Wisconsin, Midwest, Iowa, and even California and so on. And so the way that goat cheese started to trickle into American consciousness, 1960s, 70s, up into the 1980s is just really interesting. We always talk everybody always talks about Laura Chenel, and she's, you know, obviously made a big difference in terms of the popularity of goat cheese. But there was so much more to it than that. I was surprised about that. New thing was interesting to me. Just another little kind of snippet - is just the along with the value of goat cheese, the popularity of goat cheese came things like the urban goat craze.

Tami Parr  7:22 
Popularity of urban goats, kind of in the early 2000s woman named Jenny Grant in Seattle became well known. She was written up in the New York Times and so on, she had goats in her backyard in Seattle. They were not legal. She started kind of a legalization campaign, which took off in the press, and everyone became excited about it. Eventually, her goats were legalized. But other people in other cities around the country started taking up the urban goat kind of cause, you know, it's really about having the ability to have goats, but also the ability to maybe have your own milk supply, maybe make your own cheese if you want. And you know, that sort of conversation, I think, is still ongoing, but very interesting, fascinating.

Deborah Niemann  8:07 
Yeah, so as someone who's written a few books, and also I used to be a newspaper reporter back in the 90s, how hard it is to find sources.

Tami Parr  8:20 
Yes.

Deborah Niemann  8:18 
And so this just thinking about the research involved in your book makes me hurt. I just think I want to go back to bed when I think about what you must have done. Can you talk a little bit about your research process?

Tami Parr  8:32 
So much. I mean, I also started pre covid, and then when covid happened, of course, you know that all shut down, so I had to kind of stop for a couple years. But it was a really long process. I knew some people in the cheese world just from my cheese background, so I was able to reach a lot of goat cheese folks in the goat cheese community, because they knew kind of who I was. But, yeah, but it's a lot of it was, there's kind of two problems. One was just a lot of, like, emailing and trying to get a hold of goat farmers and cheese people, you know, and some people responded and some people didn't, which, you know, I get because it's like, who am I? You know that nobody knows who I am, yeah, which is totally fine.

Tami Parr  9:04 
I also did a lot of work in, like, archives and libraries and stuff, especially for things like, I have a chapter in the book about the Navajo Nation. And those are the Navajo Nation. They have a Navajo Nation archives where there's a whole bunch of oral histories of folks talking about some of the Navajo cheesemaking traditions with goat's milk and so on. So things like that, I think, especially old pictures from archives and things like that. A lot of papers from the 1920s which was kind of the 1920s was the time when goat's milk really started taking off. So there are some, there's a little bit there, out there, from some of the people who started early goat farms and stuff like that, early ADGA folks. I wish Mrs. Roby, who was one of the first people who started ADGA when it was called AMGRA at the time, when it first started, had a collection of papers that would have been a goldmine of early goat history. But things like that are really fascinating. Kind of, where were people at at the time, and what did they say, and how did they correspond with each other? So that was a big part of it, too, in addition to talking to people.

Deborah Niemann  9:58 
Yeah, so were there any gaps in the historical records that you found?

Tami Parr  10:03 
I mean, the further back you go, you know, the less and less there is, especially because in early like in colonial history and so on, goats were super undervalued. People were not interested in them. So if you're not interested in something, you don't really talk about it, you don't write about it. There's no associations of goat people in the 1600s at least not in America, or what was going to be America. You know, things like that. Whenever there's an association, there's always, often in archives, there's a group of people had a bunch of correspondence or something. But things like that. That makes it harder in the earlier 1600s, 1700s 1800s but as you get to the 1900s people are starting to talk about goats, because they've decided that goats are tuberculosis free and healthy and cows are not. So then there's a lot of discussion on it. So it's putting together a puzzle, really, in terms of trying to put this kind of history together, which is both fun sometimes and really frustrating other times, as you can imagine.

Deborah Niemann  10:52 
Oh yeah, yeah. So are there any particular lessons that you think modern goat farmers can learn from the history

Tami Parr  11:00 
What's such an interesting crossroads in terms of the commercial value of goats these days, goat meat and goat cheese is really, really popular right now, things like that. You know, for me, the questions that I kind of ended up with that I think that the study of goats kind of lends itself to, or however you would say that is just sort of, you know, why do we include certain things in history, and what we call history and not others? You know. Why haven't we talked about goats? Why is there really no history of goats, or even articles about the history of goats anywhere. This is it. I mean, now it's out. But you know, why is that the case? Why is it 2025 and there's nothing out there, you know? And how do we think about, how does the cultural memory perpetuate negative stereotypes, like about goats? And how did that stay true for so long? And why did that change? And how does that work? Those kinds of questions, I think, are really interesting to me in terms of how we've thought about goats and where we're going in the future. We're thinking about goats.

Deborah Niemann  11:51 
Yeah, so in my head, because I have dairy goats, I'm always thinking dairy and cheese. How much of the book is devoted to other types of goats, like meat and fiber.

Tami Parr  12:01 
I would say, just because of my involvement with cheese and goat cheese, it's, I'd say it's mostly dairy and cheese focused, because dairy is the big sort of value of goats right now, there's a chapter about goat meat fiber. I didn't talk about as much. Fiber is much less of a value product than it used to be. Late 19th and early 20th century. Mohair was the big goat thing, if you will. And so that's huge. I didn't go into that as much, just because I can only do so much. One of the things I like to say about this book is I hope that I've suggested things for people to talk about, like the fiber story is really fascinating and enormous unto itself. I think just because of my own trajectory and stuff that I understood and knew about already, I kind of went more for the dairy.

Deborah Niemann  12:38 
Are goats finally getting the recognition they deserve?

Tami Parr  12:40 
I mean, yes, in some ways, absolutely. I mean, goats are very valuable now. I mean, compared to how they were in the past. You know, in goat's milk cheese, goat dairying is a multi billion dollar industry. In the United States, companies are making money off of goat's milk. That's a huge change in reputation. You know, we have goat yoga, as I mentioned earlier. You know, we have the popularity of goats on social media, baby goats frolicking in pajamas, which is a famous video posted bySunflower Farm Creamery. You know, goats are very popular in a certain way, but I think there's still a lot of skepticism about goat meat.

Tami Parr  13:14 
You know, some people don't like goat cheese even, you know, I can't do how many goat farmers I've talked to, who at farmers markets are trying to sell goat cheese. Maybe you have this experience. I have too, and people will say, I don't like goat cheese, you know. And still a little bit of a skepticism. Or, I don't know how you characterize that. I know people are entitled to their preferences, of course, but you know, I think people are – there's still some wariness about goats. And, you know, I'm not sure ebbs and flows of social perceptions are a constant in society, but I think goats are more popular than ever. Will that last, time will tell. Really, I mean, who knows?

Deborah Niemann  13:46 
Yeah, exactly. If someone is new to goats, do you think it's beneficial for them to understand the history?

Tami Parr  13:53 
Good question. I mean, if someone is new to goat keeping, I mean, if you're looking to you know, what breed should I buy? All that kind of stuff. I mean, even that is kind of really wrapped up in history too. I think the reason that we have Alpines and Toggenburgs and Saanens is because of some of this history in terms of the value of goat's milk as it started to rise in the early 20th century. Does that help you keep four goats, you know, property and so on, maybe not necessarily, and on an everyday, practical level. I'm always for context and understanding how we got to a certain place. Why do I do things the way I do them? I think if you're involved in ADGA, there's the whole thing of the American Toggenburg versus the I forget the name now. You know, the Toggenburg that are descended from Switzerland versus the ones that are only you know.

Tami Parr  14:34 
So I mean running into some of that history, even just by becoming, if you want to become a breeder of a breed, some of those European breeds like Saanens and Toggenburgs and Alpines. So you definitely will run into it at some point or another. Will it help you, you know, milk your goats and so on and sell your milk? Not necessarily, but there's a context. Well, actually, even milk sales now are all tied up with some of the big companies that own Vermont Creamery and Cypress Grove Chevre and Redwood Hill. And a lot of that is sourced out by French companies. So you know, the economy of goat products is very tied to history and very relevant to probably your everyday experience if you're going to try to sell goat's milk products. So I guess maybe it is.

Deborah Niemann  15:13 
Well, I'm a real history nerd, so I frequently find myself telling people historical facts that, most people would say, like, why are you telling me this?

Tami Parr  15:23 
Yeah.

Deborah Niemann  15:23 
But ultimately, I think it's helpful, you know, like, goats are browsers, which is one reason it's been really hard for us to raise them in the United States.

Tami Parr  15:32 
Yes, they were kicked out of the colonies in the 1600s they were eating fruit tree bark. Goats eat tree bark, you know? Yeah, it's really all relevant.

Deborah Niemann  15:41 
Yeah, exactly. And you could see why they would think that they were bad. They're like, we need our fruit trees. So actually, we're tying the pieces together here, because if I had known that before we got our goats, we might have six more apple trees on our farm right now.

Tami Parr  15:58 
Really, yeah, did they just strip them off?

Deborah Niemann  16:01 
They did, yeah. They were getting out and they stripped the bark from these six apple trees. And it was so sad, because the trees were three years old. They had just produced their first apples. We were so excited,

Tami Parr  16:12 
Really optimistic. Yeah.

Deborah Niemann  16:14 
Yeah. We had a little fencing problem with the goats and...

Tami Parr  16:20 
Bye, bye. Bye.

Deborah Niemann  16:20 
Yeah.

Tami Parr  16:21 
It continues to be a theme, I guess.

Deborah Niemann  16:23 
Yeah, definitely. When you set out to write this book. And maybe this changed while you were writing it, but if so, maybe there's more than one answer to this. But what do you hope their readers take away from it?

Tami Parr  16:34 
When I first started out, I think I was just trying to figure out what was going on, and I was very interested in kind of the nerdy facts. But you know, as I started putting it together into the story, I want people to learn about goats in a really sincere way. It's like the story of goats is fascinating, but the story of goats is the story of American history. It's the story of immigrants coming in the 19th century. It's the story of the rise of big goat cheese companies and the economy of goat cheese. It's about small farms in the 60s and 70s. I know it really is tied up with American history. And I think, you know, I said earlier, what do we include in history? I mean, you know, there's always new things to discover about history. And I think that we understand ourselves better, we understand our world better when we understand all the pieces. Really, goats are a very key piece, whether or not they're valued or not they it just is a fact. They are a very key piece of American history. I hope people can appreciate that.

Deborah Niemann  17:21 
Exactly. I was really excited after we scheduled this interview and I visited your website, I saw that you had written some books about cheese, so I am really excited about having you back some time to talk about the history of cheese.

Tami Parr  17:44   
Right.

Deborah Niemann  17:44 
So I love the fact that you've niched down to the goats. What are the names of those books? In case people want to get a jumpstart on reading that before we talk about it on here.

Tami Parr  17:56 
The first one was called Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest, that was written about kind of the current at the time, artisan cheesemakers of the Pacific Northwest. And the second one was called Pacific Northwest Cheese History. So that gets into the history of cheese making and goat cheese making in the Pacific Northwest, specifically this book, Goats in America, there is quite a bit about kind of a broader history of goat cheese, and kind of how that got started, also in the early 20th century. So yeah, there's a lot to it. Definitely a lot of lot to the history of goat cheese.

Deborah Niemann  18:23 
Yeah, definitely. So where can people find you online?

Tami Parr  18:27 
My website is Tamiparr.com, my Instagram is at goat history book. And I try to post lots of interesting things about goats on Instagram. I try to post things that I didn't get into the book or that didn't make it into the book, little facts and fun events that are happening and so on. So it's kind of all kinds of goat stuff. So it's fun. I have fun on there.

Deborah Niemann  18:44 
Awesome. That does sound fun. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up today?

Tami Parr  18:49 
Yeah, like I said, I hope that people really find this book interesting and learn about goats, because there's so much to goats, so much more than people think there is. So when I sign books, I always write, go goats. So go goats.

Deborah Niemann  19:01 
I love it. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, and I'm looking forward to having a more in depth conversation about cheese soon.

Tami Parr  19:08 
Awesome. I'm excited. That'd be great.

Deborah Niemann  19:11 
And that's it for today's show, if you haven't already done so be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit fortheloveofgoats.com and you can follow us on  Facebook at facebook.com/lovegoatspodcast. See you again next time, bye for now you.