Get ready for a unique, delicious and informative evening full of new experiences and new tastes. A collaboration among Pine Cobble School; the Williams College Sustainable Food & Agriculture Program; Black Queen Angus Farm in Berlin, NY; and Wild Oats Market, Goats in the Woods is a community celebration that begins at 4 pm on Friday, April 25, with a Woods Walk; followed by a full course dinner at 5 pm; and ending with a presentation by Dr. Pete Smallidge, New York State Extension Forester and Director of the Cornell University Arnot Teaching and Research Forest. Here, in more detail, is what this out-of-the-ordinary evening at Pine Cobble School will entail:

At 4 pm, we will meet in front of the Cluett Building at Pine Cobble School on Gale Road in Williamstown, for a guided walk with Dr. Smallidge and local livestock farmer Morgan Hartman to meet the goats that are being raised in the woods at Pine Cobble. We’ll have the chance for informal conversation with Smallidge and Hartman, and visit with the friendly goats as they busily nibble away at invasive growth in the forest. We may also have the chance to meet the goats’ two guardian dogs, Francesca and Leonardo.

At 5 pm, we will head back to the Pine Cobble cafeteria, for a delicious, full-course meal prepared by Wild Oats Chef Greg Roach and featuring two international dishes made with Black Queen Angus locally raised goat meat (did you know that goat meat is a staple in many parts of the world?). Download a copy of the menu here.

The presentation by Dr. Smallidge begins at 6:30 pm and focuses on the project he managed for Cornell University Extension, called Goats in the Woods, whose purpose was to assess how the use of goats to control interfering plants in mature forests could benefit both goat owners and woodlot owners.