By Maddy Traynor

There are countless hurdles that farmers must overcome as they embark on building their businesses – acquiring land and capital, developing a brand and business plan, hiring and managing a team, and growing a loyal customer base, to name a few.

Becca Knouss, farmer and owner of The Goat Project, which sits on eighty acres in Bennington, Vermont, is very familiar with the process, the highs and lows that come with it, and is particularly grateful for the farm business planning resources that exist in Vermont.

Becca bought her first five goats - Luca, Paulie, Indigo, Nettle, and LP - in 2015, one year before she bought the land she now lives and farms on. "Two months into it, I lost one of the goats. One goat got listeria and just died within hours of contracting it and my heart was totally broken. I was like 'this is insane, this is hard,' but somehow I wasn't deterred."

Since then, she has been working towards growing her business from the ground up. Starting with goat milk soap and working towards building a creamery to eventually make goat cheese. Becca described the first few years of The Goat Project as a summersault between business-building, house-building, and farm-building. "I was just kind of meshing it all together until I met Sara, and she totally saved my business."

Sara Armstrong Donegan is a Farm Business Specialist at the Intervale Center. Our Farm Business Services team provides Vermont's farmers – from aspiring farmers to established business owners – with business development opportunities. In 2020, Becca began working with Sara through the Intervale Center's Beginning Farmer Program, which offers information, assistance, and encouragement to beginning and aspiring farmers in the state of Vermont through one-on-one coaching and business planning. Our team's work involves identifying strengths and weaknesses, setting goals, creating a vision, conducting a financial analysis, cash flow planning, and much more. This program allows farmers to build the foundation their businesses need to eventually qualify for other Vermont resources, such as the Vermont Farm Viability program, which Becca was accepted into in 2022.

Through her work with the Intervale Center and Farm Viability, Becca has now developed a full business plan, marketing plan, and financial projections for years to come. Becca described this process as "a soul-searching, dig-deep project." She added that Sara was there for her the whole way, listening and cheering her on, "helping me to figure out what is going to work, what is not going to work. We've had a lot of hard conversations and reality checks." She feels that these programs have totally changed her game.

She now has a clear vision, and the projections to back it up – Becca plans to grow her herd of goats from where it currently stands at 12 to 45 by 2028, build a creamery, and start making and selling goat cheese.

Becca noted that since she worked with our Farm Business Planning team to develop her business, she has noticed a shift in her conversations with funders – "it's interesting now talking to banks for loans, having that business plan completely changes the conversation because they really take it seriously."

"Without Sara's help, without Farm Viability, I probably would have quit farming," Becca remarked, "the resources that Vermont has are so valuable for farmers."

Growing The Goat Project in Bennington, Vermont