Today is Goatsday

GOATSDAY If Tuesday could be Bloomsday, why can't Thursday be goatsday? These three pieces should convince you.

Goats are cute. Admit it. They're also on every hillside and mountaintop in Europe, or seem to be. But not here, mostly, unless farmers have imported them.

On the Farm contributors Bill and Nicolette Hahn Niman have cast their lot with goats, and will be trying to do for them what Bill did for beef and pork. Will they succeed in making Americans think of goat as the Other Red Meat? We'll see, and happily we'll be hearing much more about their experiences raising goats in Bolinas on their BN Ranch.

Already my own New England is starting, slowly to catch on, and this afternoon Peter Smith will be telling us about a surprising resurgence of goat-raising in Maine and new market for red meat in what he continually reminds us is a very white state.

For now, though, if you want to try goat meat, Eleanor Barkhorn has assembled a list of restaurants where you can find it; like everything that isn't factory-raised, meat has a season, and this isn't it--that'll be the fall.

And if you want to see whether you actually like goat cheese or not--if you're a cheese-lover who continually walks the line between objecting to goatiness and thinking Gee, this isn't so bad after all, in fact it's really pretty good (like me, okay I admit it), Daphne Zepos gives us a very alluring, lemony way to try it from a cheesemonger I'm eager to visit if she has other ideas that sound half so nice as this one.