NEIGHBORnwork What initially drew you into grazing goats? Using the goats for clearing land meant that I could have them in my life and not have to send them to the butcher. I’ve processed chickens, turkeys, and pigs for meat, but I just have never been able to make that leap to goats. Starting a dairy requires a lot of capital: land, milking facilities, learning how to make cheese, marketing it, etc. When I got the herd that is now known as 56 Hooves (www.56hooves. com), I didn’t own land. They moved from place to place with the trailer as their shelter. The home base was Willowsford Farm and Community. I commuted to them every day, which is hard to believe looking back, since now they reside 300 feet from my front door in the off-season.
Deborah Dramby
Owner, Operator, & Shepherd of 56 Hooves By Hojung Ryu
Deborah Dramby is an expert on cultivating an agrihood through goat grazing: She is the owner and operator of 56 Hooves. Originally from Ellicott City, MD, she holds a bachelor’s degree in English and writing from Towson University and a master’s degree from the sustainable agriculture program at the University of Maryland, Institute of Applied Agriculture. After her education in agriculture, she moved to Northern Virginia to expand her career. Growing up, her parents always told her, “Do what you love and a career will evolve from that.” Now Dramby pursues her passion for livestock and farming through her business. What is your background and how did you start your business? While at College Park, some friends and I grew vegetables in a community/teaching garden, now called the Community Learning Garden (near the by campus gym and School of Public Health). The area we built on started as a heavily weeded hillside and we 6
WASHINGTON GARDENER
FEBRUARY 2022
weren’t getting as many volunteers out in the space as we needed. Then we heard about goats being used to clear land in California and reached out to a regional company, Eco-Goats. Brian Knox, the shepherd there, wasn’t terribly comfortable with leaving the goats unattended on a college campus and asked if we’d be willing to stay overnight and keep an eye on them. In doing so, I just totally fell in love with the goats and the whole concept of it. I ended up interning at Eco-Goats until I started working for them more formally. When I got the gig at Willowsford Farm in Ashburn, VA, it was hard to leave them behind, so about a year into my time there, we started a small herd. We set them up keeping the fence lines clean and ended up doing a few local grazing gigs to pay for winter feed for those 10 goats. A couple of years later, we got three bred does from Blue Ridge Goat Dairy, where we got the original 10, and two of them had triplets, one had twins. We doubled in size.
How did you come up with the idea of this business? All credit goes to grazers before me. Eco-Goats, of course. Clay and Linda Tranium of Autumn Olive Farms. Jace Goodling of Goatbusters. I was really lucky to land in a region in Northern VA that is sort of in the middle of all these great grazers, but too far for them to haul their goats, so in the beginning, they sent me pretty much every gig we got. What would you identify as your strongest influence in life? In this realm, Michael Pollan. I read The Botany of Desire in high school and it profoundly changed the way I saw the world around me. Before that, I thought humans were in the driver’s seat. After that, I realized plants, nature, and animals are influencing/controlling us just as much, maybe more. Then, I went back and read Second Nature as well as The Omnivore’s Dilemma. This led me to farming. What made the location of Western Loudoun County, VA, the best option for the business? Shortly after I purchased land further west in Loudoun County, I underwent major back surgery and couldn’t take the goats out on any jobs in 2019. That year, I realized how much the frequent moves and travel stress took a toll on their health and body condition, and
