Cindy Wright started milking goats with her family soon after her partner (now husband) Lester Bourke moved in. “And,” as she puts it, “came with three kids. We went through a ton of milk.”

They started milking in a tiny shed in front of their house on Perch Lake in Andes. Soon people started showing up asking for goats’ milk. Cindy gave it to them in mason jars. Then neighbors came asking about cheese. Then finally the milk inspector came and nicely suggested that Cindy had a business.

He helped them start pasteurizing cheese for sale. (Now you can buy it across the Hudson Valley). The family and goats and dairy outgrew the three and a half acre backyard. Cindy and Lester started the process of buying the farm in Andes. It’s in the center of the village, across from the central school. Purchasing it took nearly three years and a USDA loan, but now Dirty Girl is an in-town farm, maybe the only farm in a village across the region. The MARK Project helped with a substantial grant because many of the farm buildings needed repairing. One had to be pulled down entirely and another put up in its place. These structures were crucial to creating a farm that could be open and welcoming for the public to visit.

“It was important for us,” Cindy says, “to have a farm that people could visit, where they could see all of it, the cute baby goats and also the labor that goes into farming.” She also wanted to be across from the school—both because her and Lester’s kids go there, but she also wanted other children who might be interested in agriculture to have easy access to a working farm. Now Dirty Girl is a hub business around farming and community with a farmers market, events, and getting to pet those cute baby goats.