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Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese Paperback – Illustrated, June 8, 2010

by Brad Kessler (Author)

4.7 221 ratings

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Goat Song is the story of a year in the life of a couple who abandoned their one-bedroom apartment in New York City to live on seventy-five acres in Vermont and raise Nubian goats. In poetic, reverent detail, Brad Kessler explores our ancient relationship to the land and our gradual alienation from the animals that feed us. His fascinating account traces his journey of choosing the goats and learning how to breed, milk, and care for them. As Kessler begins to live the life of a herder, he encounters the pastoral roots of so many aspects of Western culture—how our diet, our alphabet, our religions, poetry, and economy all grew out of a pastoralist setting, a life lived among hoofed animals.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A wonderous little miracle of a book.”--Tom Ashbrook, National Public Radio

"Goat Song offers a meditation on the pastoral life…that will make an urbanite regret having missed the experience.”— The Wall Street Journal

"The writing is so beautiful you want to reread sentences to savor it."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A multi-layered, smart, erudite, and incredibly well written book."--Christian Science Monitor

About the Author

Brad Kessler’s novel Birds in Fall won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His other books include Lick Creek and The Woodcutter’s Christmas. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, and BOMB, as well as other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Goat Song

Beginnings

YEARS AGO I FELL IN LOVE WITH A FARMHOUSE IN West Virginia. The house sat at the head of a hollow—wide-board floors, a rusted tin roof—the last outpost before impassable mountains. You drove up a dirt road beside a murmuring creek and came to a cattle gate. When you hooked the gate again it felt like you were leaving the world behind.

I lived in Manhattan back then but never felt right in the city. I longed for fewer people and more trees. The rented farmhouse was an anodyne. Between semesters and on long weekends my wife, Dona, and I escaped to West Virginia. I adored the long drives, the eight-hour commute, the layers of Manhattan peeling away with each Mid-Atlantic state—New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia. It felt like stripping out of formal attire; by the Alleghenies we were down to underwear.

We were about to shake hands on the West Virginia farmhouse when a phone call came one night. The seller had burned down the house. Turned out he never really owned the homeplace—his sister did. He burned the house for spite. A family feud. An Appalachian story. The night the call came I mourned, convinced we’d never find such a perfect place again.

My whole life it seemed I’d been searching for a retreat in the mountains, a patch of land where I could grow my own food. I was a writer, Dona a photographer. We made our living—our art—with paper but we longed to make it with earth as well. Ever since reading Walden as a teen I’d nursed Thoreau’s old dream of self-reliance, his cabin along the lake, his meticulous lists of peas and beans. I admired how he wove literary culture and agriculture into one fabric—pen in one hand, hoe in the other—and how he understood that alongside civil disobedience, the most active thing one could do on earth was produce one’s own food.

For five years we searched for a home. We scoured the whole Northeast, looked at a hundred plots of land. One week a realtor called from Vermont. He’d found an eighteenth-century farmhouse on a dead-end road in the western part of the state. The asking price was absurdly low; the farmhouse had sat empty for years and nothing inside was expected to work. We might have to tear the place down, he confessed, and start anew. Yet the land was apparently stunning, worth the asking price alone. There was an orchard, a pond, outbuildings, a brook. Seventy-five acres of sheepland grown back to forest.

We drove there late one October afternoon when the trees had shed their leaves. The valley looked promising; narrow and forested with folded hills. An opalescent river tumbled aside the road. The pavement turned to gravel, then we jostled up a rocky drive and the house swung into view: bone white clapboards, mountains all around. We both knew right away.

This was over a decade ago. Back then neither of us knew much about animal husbandry (we’d both grown up in the suburbs). But soon Dona began photographing neighboring dairy farms and helping with chores; and that led to a familiarity—a friendship—with animals, particularly with goats.

This is the story of our first years with dairy goats. A story about what it’s like to live with animals who directly feed you. I tell of cheese and culture and agriculture, but also of the rediscovery of a pastoral life. Rediscovery because the longer I lived with goats the more connections I saw to a collective human past we’ve since forgotten, here in North America at least. I saw how so many aspects of our everyday culture—from our alphabet to our diet to elements of our economy and poetry—arose from a lifestyle of herding hoofed animals, and how unbeknownst to most of us, pastoralism still informs so much of the way we live today.

Goats had intrigued me for years—their intelligence, their seeming disdain of human dominion. I once trailed a herd of goats in India through the Thar Desert back to their homes at night. A herder led them into the walled city of Jaisalmer. The goats marched single file, hoofs clicking cobbles, while scooters and trucks squeezed past. At each narrow curve another doe broke from the parade and turned in to a home where a member of the household—a child or a woman—held open a wooden door and greeted the returning goat with a palmful of salt. The does had returned from the desert to be milked and bedded with their family at night. In the morning they’d gather again with the herder. I’d never seen such a wonderful arrangement before—goats and humans living side by side—but it was one of the most ancient continuous relationships between mammals.

In Vermont, Dona milked a neighbor’s goats when the neighbor went away. She brought home the raw milk still warm in a glass bottle. I made a queso blanco, the simplest cheese in the world. (You heat the milk, add a spoonful of vinegar, and the curds separate from the whey like magic; drain the curds in a cheesecloth, let them drip for a few minutes and—voilà—you’ve made a cheese.) The queso blanco was tasty but a bit rubbery. When the neighbor went away again I tried my hand at making chèvre. I had a small bottle of rennet and the right starter culture. The curds set up overnight and the next day I drained them in a cheesecloth. When we tried the fresh chèvre the following afternoon, it tasted like nothing we’d ever eaten before—a custard, a creamy pudding, the cheese so young and floral it held within its curd the taste of grass and herbs the goat had eaten the day before. It seemed we were eating not a cheese, but a meadow.

The French used to call cheese “the drunkard’s biscuit.” That afternoon we were intoxicated without drinking a thing. We devoured the creamy chèvre smeared on slices of bread, ran fingers across the plate. We couldn’t understand why it tasted so good. Was it the raw unpasteurized milk, or that we knew the goats—their labor and ours? “Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food, in which appetite had no share?” wrote Thoreau. “I have been inspired through the palate.”

That afternoon we decided: it was time to get our goats.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1416561005
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; Reprint edition (June 8, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781416561002
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1416561002
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.44 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #908,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #834 in Animal Husbandry (Books)
- #972 in Culinary Biographies & Memoirs
- #26,512 in Memoirs (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 221 ratings

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Brad Kessler

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Brad Kessler is the author most recently of North: A Novel which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Vermont Book Award. He is a critically acclaimed novelist, farmer and winner of the Rome Prize and a Whiting Writer’s Award. His other books include the novel Birds in Fall and the literary non-fiction Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese. His work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Lit Hub. He teaches in the MFA Program at Antioch University.

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I am not a SMURF

This book is rather marvelous :)

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2014

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I signed up for a raw goat milk share, ordered equipment, and began reading blogs and taking notes because I want to make my own chevre. One of the blogs I read mentioned this book and I thought, "why not?"

There is something for everyone in this book. It's funny and strangely lyrical and haunting in turns. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Brad Kessler forces the reader to see the deep connections between the small farm and ancient, as well as more recent, pastoral poetry. He is well informed and did his research for the scope isn't just American or European, but looks at traditions from Africa and India. This is, in many ways, not just a tour de force of cheese making and dairy goats, but a tracing of the lineage, of song and being, between humans and goats.

What startled me, as a cradle Catholic, was Mr Kessler's obvious reverence for Thomas Merton and the local Monks in his area. And the connections between the crafting of cheese and monasticism is something that never dawned on me before. His delicate reverence is sincere and honest. Quite frankly he made me want to read Seven Storey Mountain again. Although Mr Kessler isn't a Catholic, he certainly captures that quiet longing that has always been a part of growing up Catholic for me.

For hours after I finished it, I was mulling the history of cheese, the Old Testament, nomads and monasticism, poetry and liturgy, and how all these intersect on the amazing goat.

At any rate, this is the perfect read for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Brad Kessler takes you into a year with goats, and we're all better people (and better informed) for having read this!

6 people found this helpful

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Andrew Schonbek

How Is a Soul Like a Cheese?

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2009

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This is one of the many questions asked by Brad Kessler in this surprisingly poetic book.

He provides the answer: "It starts out raw and unformed and tries to reform itself over time. It is constantly corrected and rebuffed, purged of blemishes and taints and sins".

If you think Goat Song is just about goats, think again. Yes the goats are present and yes we learn much about them, but they are but a path, one that leads to a deep and romantic contemplation of life itself.

The book is dedicated to Annie Dillard and something of her spirit seems to hover in its pages. Kessler revels in the use of esoteric vocabulary, as does Dillard, though not to the degree that he would invoke the word "thigmotropic" as she unfortunately has.

Here are some examples of his wordsmith's art...

"Thunder growled outside, the sky turned suddenly tenebrous".

"The days were lovely then, cool and sere".

"The rocks are green schist and round, both about ten pounds".

"They gazed Talmudically across the mountains while they chewed their cud".

"Our milk is local and autochthonous".

"I didn't recognize the dip or swale or glade mantled in its mattress of snow".

The first two are beautiful; the third appropriately scientific; the fourth sketchy (how does a goat gaze "Talmudically" and what does this look like?); the fifth and sixth perhaps tautologies (local, autochthonous, dip, swale).

But it doesn't really matter. As with Dillard (who also likes the word "swale" - "The swale drained the dunes like a vein" - The Maytrees) it all flows together in a poetic prose that engages even as it challenges.

And so we live the rhythms of the land, the pastoral life, the seasons, times of day, scents, and tastes, and sounds.

Somehow it's not surprising that it all seems to lead to matters of the spirit and soul. The following quotation is taken from near the end of the book:

"Down here in the valley I think often of the Carthusian brothers up on our mountain - especially when I make cheese. We live so close to each other, only altitude separates us, but their lives remain a mystery, a rumor, the sound of bells in the late afternoon. Still, I wonder what a day is like up there versus down here. The raven who's been rowing between our houses for weeks - a thin black line - do they see him too? The owl hooting at night - do they hear his inflection? Do we share the same faith if not belief - the same lasting silence?"

Highly recommended.

21 people found this helpful

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Phred Linn

Great story

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2010

Verified Purchase

I am a goat person. I don't expect people that don't love goats would pick up a book like this. I didn't expect to learn anything new about goats. I actually learned quite a lot.

The man that wrote this book is an intellectual. He is well educated. He has a point of view that is deep. Yet he writes in a very clear and friendly way. He helped me rationalize my seemingly unjustified enthusiasm for this hobby.

I thought it was pretty coincidental that he encountered such a range of problems in his first year. I wondered briefly if some of it was contrived, then I remembered my first year, and decided to give him a break.

2 people found this helpful

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Maggie Roberts

a thoughtful peek at the life of a cheese maker

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2023

Verified Purchase

This book is the story of a man, not searching for the profoundness of life. He was only looking for a simpler less congested lifestyle. He finds more meaning than he intended, tells a thoughtful and intriguing story of goats, milking and finally making cheeses and finding his true purpose. A delightful read.

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Farnham & Whale

History, text and memoir, an excellent read

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2010

Verified Purchase

I read Kessler's book in the weeks leading up to and following my becoming an amateur dairy goat farmer. I had left NYC to take my recording studio to the country and ended up adding dairy to my list of things I wanted to produce myself. Kessler's writing is lively and humorous but his knowledge is also very deep. I believe cheese is man's greatest culinary feat--from the point of view of deliciousness, variety between cultures and its fascinating interplay of living organisms, enzymes, heat, salts and aging--and it is such a treat to read an author who can be rapturous in the experience of a bite of cheese, the pasture that went into the making of the milk, and also relay the 14 stages of making hard cheese as if they were paragraphs from an epic poem. Kessler weaves the history of cheesemaking, goatherding and the goat into his memoir with fluidity and finesse. One of my goats ripped out 10 or so pages while I was reading it because I was so absorbed in the story I didn't see her sneak up on me. Luckily, I chased her down and got the pages back without her eating any. This book should be read by anyone interested in the history of animal domestication, history of food, goats, cheese or the flight from city to country in the pursuit of something earthy and real.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

jean Waymark

The author's literary skills describe the soul enriching experience of a shepherd

Reviewed in Canada on January 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

I liked this book because it offers a look at a life experience which we could all do well to connect to.
I am presently keen to share my copy with my reader friends. thanks

JessElm

A heartwarming delight

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

This is a gem of a book - honest, funny, engaging,and inspiring. Never knew goats were so interesting - almost want to go and do the same thing.

Brittany S

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on March 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

Wonderful heartfelt read. A very vivid and inspirational story of life with goats.

Valnera

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

Beautiful book. A keeper. Gave many for Christmas pressies.

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