How We Got Started in Farming and Goat Husbandry

In 1998 the Sisters of St. Mary were approached by the Rt. Rev'd Jackson Biggers, a CSM Associate and Bishop of the Diocese of Northern Malawi, with the request to help found a new Anglican religious Order in south central Africa. Among the life skills which the Sisters were asked to impart was goat dairy husbandry.  CSM accepted the challenge and set up a simple goat dairy on their property in Peekskill.  They also sought training in hand-till, sustainable agriculture, both for themselves and for their African novitiate.  

The goat shed and enclosure were built below St. Mary's Chapel on the old St. Michael's school site. Shortly after our new African novices arrived in the U.S., grade dairy goats were acquired from a Carmelite monastery near Binghamton, NY.  The Sisters milked, made cheese and 

other products, experimented with soap making and tanning hides.  Goats in urban Westchester County​​ were an anomaly, and people would drive from great distances to see them.  When God called the community to leave their century-old Mother House for rural upstate New York, the plan was to take their goats with them and continue in some way.  The African sisters were also in transition, the Founding Sisters returning to Malawi at the same time that the American community relocated.  It became clear that continuing in dairy goat husbandry was not wise for the American household, and fiber goats were investigated.  Sisters of the Monastery of the Holy Myrrhbearers (Orthodox) offered to give us a cashmere goat start-up herd, and so the Sisters of St. Mary began their cashmere goat adventure. ​

The story will be continued as time permits...................