When Mike Hoopengardner announced to friends and strangers, “‘We’re going to build a goat dairy and make goat cheese,’ people thought we were absolutely nuts,” he told about 50 attendees at the eighth annual Food and Growers Association of Laughery Valley and Environs seminar Feb. 8 at the Batesville Intermediate School cafeteria. This year’s theme was “Small Farm Enterprises = Big Opportunities.”
He and wife Kristy Kikly own Redbud Farm, home of Caprini Creamery, Spiceland, one of three goat dairy creameries in Indiana. Daughter Jessica, 16, who does the milking, “is as big a part of our operation as Kristy and I are.”
The itch to become farmers began when the family had two goats and two llamas on five acres in Fortville. Whenever Kristy Hoopengardner tells her husband, “‘Mike, I’ve been thinking,’ I just cringe,” he joked. The Eli Lilly scientist with a Ph.D. “does research and she thinks” all day. Now she was pondering their home life. “‘Is there a way we can make money with these goats?’” she asked him.
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