The Sapps welcome the new year with new life
Tucked away in a small barn, nestled among bales of straw and heat lamps, eight little lives are just getting started.
Shortly before Christmas, Michele Sapp and her family welcomed several baby goats into the world at their farm on Route 5 in Milton. Being a farmer is hard, labor-intensive work, but it becomes a joyful job when the day includes tending to cooing, cuddly kids.
"It never gets old," Michele said. "It's the neatest thing to watch."
At any given time, new life abounds at the Sapps' farm on Route 5, where a slew of goats, cows, chickens and a few donkeys – plus a pony and a couple family dogs – are truly living the good life.
"My kids out there live better than some humans do," Michele said. "It's no joke. Every animal on this farm eats good and lives well."
Michele and her distant cousin, 19-year-old Nicole Lallier, run Daddy's Money Market Goats, where some of the goats born and raised in Milton are later sold as pets to area families.
"Without her, I can't do this," Michele said of Nicole, citing a bout with blood poisoning that requires continual monitoring, and a serious neck operation she underwent years ago.
Despite her health struggles, Michele doesn't miss a beat. She's a fast talker, with that slight Sussex County twang only found among native Delaware farmers, and Nicole keeps right up as the two talk about the intricacies of the goat-keeping business, even helping finish Michele's sentences and stories.
And Nicole's impression of Michele's husband, Richard Sapp Jr., is on point, highlighting the longtime farmer's soft side for baby goats, especially those born with black coats. There's no lack of fun – or sass – at the family farm.
Farming has always been a way of life for the Sapp family. Michele's husband is a third-generation farmer, whose parents live next door and still work the land. Between the two couples, they tend about 1,800 acres in Kent and Sussex counties, where they grow an array of produce, from feed corn to baby lima beans, which is processed at the Sapps' granary in Harrington.
After a career working for state and federal governments, the call to the farm life reached Michele in a slightly unsuspecting way.
When her son, Trey, was a student at Cape Henlopen High School, school work wasn't exactly his forte. But the school's agricultural science program, led by teacher Heather Hastings, helped the struggling student find his way.
"She became my best friend through this," Michele said. "She took him right under her wing, and if he ever needed help, he'd go to her."
Hastings, looking to expand the program, received approval from the district to buy a few goats for students to work with around 2008, but the City of Lewes said the animals couldn't be kept onsite, Michele said.
That's when four homeless goats met one of the biggest hearts in Sussex County.
"Loving them too much is my biggest fault," Michele said.
Soon after welcoming those first ornery critters, Michele bottle fed the first baby goat born on her farm, Sir Fitz Charles.
Something clicked – caring for goats had become Michele's passion.
"It was over by that point," Michele said. She laughed as she recalled Sir Charles's gentleness, which quickly prompted the first admission of a goat inside her home.
"When they cry, it sounds like they're saying, 'mom,'" she said, as if an excuse is needed to show how easy it is to fall in love with the babies – especially when they're wearing tiny, hand-knit sweaters.
For about seven years, the Sapps' farm served as the "temporary" home for Cape's goats and a place for the school's Future Farmers of America Program. Eventually, the ag science studies moved on to another farm, but tending to the kids remained a passion of the Sapps.
The herd now has grown from those first four kids to about 44 goats, a mixture of breeding bucks, does, yearlings and newborns.
Passing by seven acres of pastures, it's a lot to ask of someone not to slow down or pull over as all those bearded buddies hop around each other or stand like statues on top of their small shelters alongside the road.
"It's not just us," Nicole said. "For other people, it makes them so happy to see these little animals."
While there are hard times – and a lot of hard work – that comes along with tending to living creatures, Michele said she couldn't imagine her life in any other way.
"Just watching them – when they run, they run sideways. And they pounce and they prance," she said, shifting her shoulders and laughing. "I don't know what I'd do without them. This is all we do. We just love them."
