“Marvin just walked in one day, came up the drive, with a sheep beside him. We called her Mabel.” So says Meagan Frederick, co-proprietor of Frederick Farm Goat Sanctuary at 12 Sholam Road in the Town of Wawarsing’s “Reservoir Country.”

That was in 2013, Meagan and her husband Warren had lived full time in Ulster County for six years by then. Meagan had started coming up here in 2006 on some land with an A-frame for her and her dog to get out into the woods on weekends away from the city. Warren joined her in 2007, and they weekended for a year or so. They soon started building the house, barn, and farm, and along the way got married, too. Warren, a toy designer, had moved to freelance work after ten years at Fisher Price. Meagan’s day job was in the city and she commuted for that.

Then came Marvin, a big white Saanen mix. Saanens are Swiss “milk goats” from Saanental in western Switzerland. He needed a job, basically, having been let go, along with his friend Mabel, after being in some summer camp petting zoo. They suspect he had been wandering the woods around the Rondout Reservoir before finding their farm. They took to Marvin right away and while they also had dogs and chickens, they found that a goat was good company. From that point, they came up with the idea of becoming a goat sanctuary.

Now they have eight rescued goats, all different: Zoe who is a boer (South African breed); the black Zachary, another Alpine breed mix; the adorably cute Peanut and Pumpkin, African pygmies; Eva and Suki, both Nigerian dwarfs that the Fredericks adopted in the spring of 2020; and the latest addition, Ginger, a Nubian, who they also adopted this year, after the pandemic had shut everything down. They now have enough goats to move from just a sanctuary farm to a tourist destination, part of the agri-tourism boom in the area that has people from the city and other urban areas coming up to partake in the types of nature and farm life they don’t typically get to experience.

The Fredericks were already renting their property via Airbnb, and in the fall of 2019, Meagan explains, “We joined ‘Animal Experiences’ through Airbnb. Many of our Airbnb guests seemed to be coming for the goats so we thought we’d give it a shot!”

About then, Mabel the sheep went to live at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. “Goats tend to bully sheep,” Meagan noted. And at WFAS, Mabel has plenty of her own kind to mingle with.

Then came COVID-19 and their “Animal Experiences” shut down for six months, reopening in September. And so tourists, primarily city people looking for something fun and different to do out in the country, are coming back. “Masked and socially distanced, of course,” said Meagan.

The goats have distinct personalities and they can be very mischievous, too. Meagan said, “I think the most important thing for me is to show people the ‘human’ side of these animals — how intelligent and affectionate they can be. Peanut will plop right down next to you for cuddles and scratches, Marvin rubs his head into you like a cat (watch out for the horns). Suki and Eva have no concept of ‘personal space’ and will stand right up next to your face for affection.”

Marvin has a thing for zippers and will zip them up and down if he can get to them. Zachary once stole Meagan’s earbud out of her ear and ran off with it, while she was “Remote Visiting” on a global event. She got it back, wet, but unchewed in time to resume remoting.

And so, to everything else you can do in Ulster County, you can add “Goat Therapy.” The goats enjoy meeting people and people tend to like stroking and rubbing a goat.

Going Full Goat

On a recent Saturday, we went along for the ride, meeting Marvin and Zachary, petting Eva and Suki, and also meeting some farm chickens, ruled over by Mohawk, a big white rooster with a hearty cry. Then, after everyone had some therapy time, we walked up into the woods on a trail over rocks, and streams — wear your boots, this is a hike — observing how the goats like to do this and how they forage as they go. They are enthusiastic foragers, and will eat fallen leaves happily as long as there’s some life left in them. They will also eat bark and twigs. But, as the little sign by the trail makes clear, they do not eat tin cans, despite the myths.

Meagan carried on goat education as we progressed, and she said that goats do tend to sample things, they explore the environment by tasting stuff in the same kind of way that babies do. “But they won’t eat food that has been contaminated or gotten dirty.”

It might also be noted that humanity’s favorite drug — caffeine — was discovered in Ethiopia when goat herders noticed the animals becoming super energetic after nibbling on wild coffee beans.

Indeed, goats are almost certainly the oldest of our domesticated animals other than dogs. Goat domestication began around 10,000 years ago, in the earliest days of agriculture, and they stem from wild goats in the mountains of western Iran. Today there are anywhere from 500 to 700 million goats in the world and they are bred for milk, cheese and meat. The dwarf breeds weigh in at as little as 20 pounds, while the biggest domesticated breeds can reach well over 500 pounds.

Goats are herbivores and belong to the Bovidae, a family that includes sheep, cattle, buffalo and antelope. They are athletic animals, capable in some cases of a five-foot jump over obstacles, and can reach 12 miles an hour for short stretches, and in some cases can run as fast as humans for several miles. Some varieties are known to climb into trees in search of tasty leaves. Their eyes have rectangular pupils, which, as Meagan Frederick explained, “means they can see to the sides very well, in fact they have almost 360-degree vision.” Obviously useful for animals that are considered appetizing by many predators. Goat males are bucks, females are does, and the youngsters are, yes, kids. They are prone to forming herds and wild herds can have as many as 20 members.

Like cows, goats are ruminants with complex stomachs with four compartments. Thus, goats also chew their cud like cows. While not indigenous to the Americas, they arrived with the first Europeans and now are found in many areas in both North and South America. A census of Jamestown in 1630 listed goats as valuable assets. Goats were a part of farms all through the colonial era and around 1900 there was a surge in the population of dairy goats here. The 1904 World’s Fair in Saint Louis featured dairy goats and set off a boom in goat rearing across the farmlands of the nation.

Today, all of our relationships with animals are under reconsideration. Meagan noted, “I think visitors do see that they all have distinct personalities, and that may make them think a little about why farm animals that we eat are considered differently from the animals we bring into our homes like dogs and cats. To me, goats can be that kind of companion too. I hope to inspire people to think the same way, while giving them a unique experience that they can’t get anywhere else.”

But this agri-tourism boom has more benefits than just getting city folks to have better understanding of animals. There are also benefits for our whole area from that, because after a goat therapy session and a walk in the woods at Frederick Farm Goat Sanctuary, as Meagan said, “I’m always happy to send folks down to Ellenville to Gaby’s or Tony & Nick’s, when they’re looking for something to eat.”