FONTANA, Kan. —Education often takes a front seat in 21st century agriculture. Small family farms can be an easy approach for new community members wanting to take the first step in learning about the industry. Many times, for the day-to-day consumer, the experience is a return to the basics.

Sarah Grace Easdon of Grace Heritage Dairy lives with her husband and two young children in Fontana, Kansas. She carries a long family legacy and wants nothing more than to share her dairy goat lifestyle with those families and local farms around her.

“Grace Heritage Dairy actually started with my grandparents,” Easdon said. “My grandparents farmed and were facing bankruptcy. They bought some dairy goats. They would put goats up on stands and let Holstein bottle calves come in and nurse off of them. That was their solution. So then, growing up, my mom took that and showed dairy goats for a while. When my parents got married, the goats came with her. Then they transitioned over time to a full commercial meat herd. Then anyway, I guess the cycle repeats. The goats came with me.”

The dairy has been in the family for four generations, from Easdon’s grandmother, Pricilla Grace in 1977, to her mother Christina Grace in 1987 to herself and today, to her 5-year-old daughter, Abigail Grace. Each generation shares the same middle name.

“It’s dual purpose,” Easdon said. “That’s the name side of it. Then the second piece of it is we all live under grace.”

With a 100-year-old red barn as the centerpiece of the property, Easdon utilizes nine acres and 25 Anglo-Nubian goats to fulfill her own legacy.

“All of our goats are hand-milked,” Easdon said. “Then this year, we are splitting our dairy does into a meat herd as well. All of our kids this year are half dairy, half meat and our goal is to run concurrent herds. We’ll just take a few generations to breed into that.”

Breeding traits such as milk production, birthing ease and handling ease are foundational for the dairy. Meat goats are still pretty new, but Easdon said she looks for good temperament and self-sufficient behaviors.

Recently, she received a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant to fund her educational projects on the dairy. Her first summer intern, Brynley, works closely with the family learning how to make sustainability a priority.

“One of the solutions we’ve had to use for our acreage and for goat health is intensive rotational grazing,” Easdon said. “In the summertime when it’s warm and humid, the barber pole worm, which is the most common internal parasite, can multiply within three to five days. So ideally, if you’re moving your animals on pasture every three to five days, it will stop that from being such a prevalent issue.”

The family is originally from central Kansas near Junction City. After moving, in Easdon’s mind, it was a priority to maintain involvement in her community and share what she had to offer.

“I still wanted to meet people and of course, outreach to our community,” Easdon said. ”I thought, I’ll put a sign in the yard and see what happens. And people came.”

The small backyard farming operation pays for itself, but Easdon wants to share her love of small animals and farming with her children, community, neighbors and friends.

“We never want to be so big that I can’t meet every person that comes on our property,” Easdon said. “The people are the whole point. Our perspective comes that everything here will pass away, but the souls of people don’t pass away. If you’re not interacting with people, you’ve kind of missed it.”

Goat milk isn’t as commonplace in the dairy industry, but Easdon finds many of her clients are lactose intolerant. Her goats’ milk is easily digestible, a great alternative for lactose intolerance and works as an attractive commodity for mothers transitioning their children off of breast milk. From her herd, she sells raw milk and unique flavors of goat cheese including strawberry jam, Italian and dill.

“If you go to the store or somebody says goat cheese, it’s a soft cheese,” Easdon said. “Any kind of cheese can be made out of goat milk. But when people say goat cheese, they’re thinking the soft cheese. That’s called Chèvre.”

Easdon wants her farm to be an experience, one she can share with as many people as possible. New this spring and summer, she started a goat skills class designed to include topics such as blood draws, milk testing, injections, hoof trimming, dehorning and FAMACHA scoring. In the agritourism realm, she invited local families to help with morning chores and learn how to milk goats by hand through word of mouth and participation in the Miami and Linn County spring farm tours.

Most recently, Easdon hosted barn quilt painting classes in her barn where parents can learn to paint while children play with the kids.

“The neatest thing about the farm is that you get to embrace the seasons,” Easdon said. “That’s good for the land. That’s good for the livestock and it’s good for our family. We kind of follow the sunlight.”