Everything Jim Schott knows about business he learned from goats.
“When you hang around goats every day, you realize how creative they are,” said the 70-year-old Boulder County goat farmer, who is pretty creative, too.
Schott has wanted to expand for years, but Boulder County’s escalating real-estate market made land too pricey for raising goats.
So about a year ago, Schott began asking Boulder County officials for help. On Feb. 28, they agreed to use $1.6 million from county and city open-space funds to buy Schott more land.
“Goats are persistent, or stubborn, depending on how you look at it,” said Schott. “They don’t easily give up.”
Schott, a former education professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, never went to business school, and he never ran a business. So he really does owe his business success to goats – those cloven-hooved creatures alternately associated with both Satan and poverty.
Goats have freaky, horizontal pupils, and they grow horns and beards. The image of a goat’s head fits within an inverted pentagram, a.k.a. the devil’s symbol.
“In the ’30s, goats became associated with low-class,” said Schott. “A lot of people had goats partly because they didn’t have anything else. Goats provided milk and meat, and they were able to survive by eating brush.”
Schott, however, uses his goats to make cheeses priced at up to $25 a pound. If you shop at Whole Foods or Wild Oats, or eat at some of Colorado’s finer restaurants, you may be familiar with his company, Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy.
Haystack, which employs only about 20 people, makes premium goat cheeses that have won major culinary awards, including kudos from the American Cheese Society and the World Cheese Contest. The April issue of Sunset Magazine named Haystack among four “favorite goat cheeses.”
Haystack also sells young goats to companies that raise and slaughter them. Goat meat is popular among Middle Easterners and some Latinos in the United States. Most of Schott’s goats, however, are milked for six years and then sold, essentially as lawn mowers, to wealthy people with grassy properties.
Despite his success with goats, Schott is not what you would call a big cheese, or even a big Schott. In 1989, he bought a 6-acre plot 4 miles north of Boulder, where he began to raise his goats. Today, the operation has grown to 110 goats, crammed on the same land with a dairy building, stables and Schott’s home. The goats are fed alfalfa and grains in the foreground of a giant volcanic rock that looks like a giant haystack, hence the name.
Schott has long needed more agricultural land in an area zoned for pricey ranchettes. He looked at property in Weld County but didn’t want to leave Boulder County and its culture of well- known foodmakers, including Celestial Seasonings tea, White Wave tofu and Horizon Organic milk. So he asked for a land subsidy in the name of both open space and economic development.
“If we’re going to grow, we’re going to have to move,” he told Boulder officials. “This is your last chance to keep us in the county.”
Using money earmarked for open space, Boulder County commissioners voted to pay $1.6 million for land off 63rd Street and Oxford Road. Haystack will buy 32 acres of the land for $650,000 and then lease 48 acres of it from the county.
Haystack will demolish some old farm buildings and erect its new dairy and visitors center. (Folks now can visit Haystack, at 5239 Niwot Road, from 12 to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Saturdays).
“This is so far beyond my wildest imagination when I started with five goats,” said Schott.
He hopes to close on the land this month. He’s raising more than $1 million from banks and private-equity investors to fund the project. His herd will grow from 110 to about 800. And with all those goats, Schott will finally be able to hire a CEO and retire.
“I’m still a little embarrassed to say I’m the CEO,” Schott said. “You wouldn’t hire an old education professor to be your CEO.”
Or even an old goat. But that’s a lesson for another day.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
