Dairy passion for a Texas confection

NEEDVILLE, Texas — Educated for a career in accounting, Stacey Roussel never thought she would one day be operating a small goat dairy, processing the milk produced on her farm into popsicles.

“I quit counting at 40 flavors,” Roussel said. “I like to experiment in the kitchen and to surprise my customers.”

All We Need Farm is located near Needville, an hour southwest of Houston. There, Roussel, her husband, Jay, and their family milk 20-25 goats — a mix of Nubians and LaManchas — each season. The Roussels begin their kidding season in January or February each year and milk the goats until they are at full capacity for the frozen products they produce from the milk.

Plans are in the works to grow both the herd and her processing efforts, Roussel said.

“I’d like to double the size of my dairy in the next five years,” Roussel said. “We picked up a new product last fall and it went over like gangbusters, so I think there’s some potential for us to sell other things.”

Roussel plans to add caramel, called cajeta, to her farm’s product line this year, following the success of a trial run last fall.

“We made 300 jars of caramel in September, before we finished our production in early October,” Roussel said. “We sold out of that before Christmas and we have a waiting list.”

In the past 30 years, Roussel’s career has changed from accountant to dairy entrepreneur.

“I was working as an auditor at a firm, out of college, and I had high hopes for my career,” Roussel said. “It didn’t take me very long to realize my personality wasn’t suited to sitting behind the same desk every day, or that the culture was different than what I was looking for.”

Roussel began to reevaluate her career choices with the birth of her first child.

“My husband encouraged me to find work that made me happy,” Roussel said. “So, I took some time with that baby and started dreaming.”

Roussel became involved in her church’s community garden, learning she loved being outside, growing things. The young family purchased a 4-acre property outside of Houston, where Roussel planned to grow vegetables for her family. That turned into an opportunity to grow vegetables for a restaurant in Houston. Looking to stabilize her income, she developed a community-supported agriculture business that grew vegetables for 75 families.

Roussel’s CSA burgeoned to include 200 chickens and 12 pigs raised each year for shares, and eventually 10 milking goats. The chaos prompted her to reevaluate, choosing one area of focus.

“My kids loved the goats, so after lots of thought, I chose the goat dairy,” Roussel said. “I had friends who had a micro-dairy with 20 or 30 goats, and they were making a living making cheese, so I knew it was possible.”

With knowledge of five families in the Houston area marketing chèvre, Roussel pondered other avenues.

“I realized my kids ate a lot of ice cream, so I thought, ‘Let’s give it a try — we’ve got this Nubian milk, it’s supposed to be high butterfat,’” Roussel said. “My husband bought me a little Cuisinart counter-top ice cream maker and I started making ice cream every day.”

Roussel said her ice cream repeatedly got a lukewarm reception from her husband. Then, one day, a kitchen mishap became the game changer.

“My daughter spilled a whole can of cinnamon in her oatmeal, I threw it in the ice cream maker,” Roussel said. “That was the day Jay came home and said the ice cream was really good, that he thought I could make money with it.”

Roussel replicated the recipe, and armed with samples, she headed to the restaurant in downtown Houston that had launched her farming career.

“I asked her if she thought people would buy my goat milk ice cream,” Roussel said. “She told me to put it on a stick, so we ran with that.”

In 2015, the Roussels moved to their current location near Needville, where they turned a 17-acre property into their dairy farm. Since then has focused her entrepreneurial efforts on making her goat pops. For the first two years, she worked with a business in Houston to manufacture the popsicles.

“I built my dairy building with that idea, that we’d just be milking and transporting the milk to Houston for someone else to make the product,” Roussel said.

During that time, Roussel tested her market to ensure the popsicles would be received as she hoped.

“We were marketing at farmers markets, so we had a lot of direct contact with our customers,” Roussel said. “It was funny when we started people would call them goat cheese popsicles. I had to explain a lot that there was no cheese in them.”

By 2017, Roussel said she felt confident in marketing the popsicles. The family procured funding to purchase the necessary equipment to begin manufacturing their popsicles on-farm, with two employees to assist with production.

This past year, Roussel shifted her business model from farmers markets to self-distribution wholesaling.

“We sell our popsicles to mom-and-pop shops all across south Texas,” Roussel said. “I run routes two days a week, one day in Houston and one day on the outskirts, going from North Houston to La Grange to Nassau Bay. Before the pandemic, we were clipping 20% growth, which was really significant.”

With her goals rooted in further expansion, Roussel said this year she plans to ensure the strength of her core product before taking the next step with her newly developed product line.

“We’re seeing a little slowing in the market right now,” Roussel said. “I ended the year with the same inventory I had last year, and by January of last year I was sold out. That’s not the case this year, so we have that hurdle to get over.”

Roussel hopes to see the necessary growth to begin looking at gradual herd expansion this summer. Beyond the popsicles and caramel, Roussel is hoping the added production will give her the ability to make yogurt and market fluid milk.

Processing the milk produced by her goats has given Roussel a greater appreciation for the business she is developing.

“I like the selling part, but I never anticipated how hard it would be,” Roussel said. “I have learned, though, that I have to sell my product myself, because no one else is as passionate about it as I am.”