“We didn’t even talk about it, we knew this was how we wanted to live.”
Tied together by the love for mountains and working the land, Donica and Caleb Krebs operate Old Forge Homestead, a farm in Siam/Hampton area of Carter County focused on dairy goats and community connections.
Donica and Caleb met while working as counselors leading campers on Appalachian Trail hikes. Caleb is from Tennessee and grew up helping family with soy and cotton, working in cotton packing houses. Donica grew up in Florida, influenced by family who raised beef and dairy cattle.
Even though their farm is a newly established enterprise, you can easily tell how it ties back to deep family history. Her grandfather was a WWII veteran, the children of Italian immigrants to America, and wanted to start his new life after the war being self-sufficient. Donica’s earliest memories are of his ¼ acre intensely-planted and flourishing garden. She would help pick the Italian sauce tomatoes or dandelion greens for home cooked meals.
There is also family legacy in the dairy industry. Donica’s great-great uncle had an ice cream company in Italy, and brought his techniques when he immigrated to Gainesville, Florida and started an ice cream plant. Family legend is that he was the creator of ‘Butter Pecan’.
Old Forge Homestead sells dairy goats and milk via herdshare,*, and also, as Donica describes it, “a variety of value-added products that come with having a farm.” All farmers need a market to sell their products.
“We had goat milk and products to sell and we needed customers,” says Donica. In the mid-2010s, Donica and several others got together and launched the Elizabethton Farmers Market. Its first year in 2017 was small. Then the pandemic hit. It was said that there wasn’t enough interest. But in 2022, Donica was compelled to work hard to launch it again, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. They took SNAP-EBT and the Double Up Food Bucks programs.
“For the 2024 season, I was most proud of the variety and the quality of vendors at the Market. Our vendors are committed to a good product and they’re in it because they love it. For a smaller market we were strong on produce.”
So, is it harder to raise goats, or to raise a farmers market?
“It is definitely harder to do a market. The goats always agree with you.”
Donica is currently enrolled in the ARC&D Winter Business Intensive portion of Field School and will take back lessons learned to the vendor community as the Elizabethton Market Manager.
“I think the ARCD is situated to really start to make a difference in helping the farming community that I’m in.”
*A herdshare is a business model or an arrangement in response to laws restricted (raw) milk sales, where people come together to contractually own a portion of a goat or cow, becoming a shareholder in the animal and therefore able to receive its milk or any profits.