Fat Toad Farm is a family-run goat dairy in Brookfield, Vermont. It was started as a raise-your-own-food effort, but when the herd grew from 2 to 12 to 25 and started producing much more milk than one family could drink, Fat Toad Farm became a certified goat dairy. Today the family—Steve Reid, Judith Irving, Calley Hastings, and Josey Hastings—fills various roles on the farm and in the production room.


It’s Fat Toad’s somewhat unusual goat milk caramel that caught our eye. Josey has lived in Mexico on and off for the past decade, and there she discovered cajeta, a popular caramel sauce made from goat’s milk. She insisted the family try their hands at making it, and five years and four flavors later, customers can’t get enough of this delectable treat. We’re thinking ice cream right about now.

Like dulce la leche (a traditional caramel sauce made with cow’s milk), all of the Fat Toad caramel sauces start with milk and sugar. But here, of course, the milk is from goats and the sugar is organic. Choose the original flavor (simply milk and sugar), or go for coffee bean, vanilla bean, or cinnamon for an extra flavor kick. The creamy, sweet sauce tastes familiar at first, but the finish is lent a buttery complexity unlike anything we’ve ever had. The two-jar boxed set comes in a unique wooden box and is perfect for gift-giving, but we wouldn’t blame you one bit if you wanted to keep the deliciousness for yourself.

We heard about the caramel sauce from Bruce Irving, who wanted to share the story of Fat Toad Farm and its DIY origins—and wound up learning more about his sister Judith’s family business in the process. “I knew Daily Grommet reaches an audience that’s on the lookout for the different, the little-known (at least for now!), and the high-quality, but when they posted Fat Toad Farm’s story, complete with a movie, even I was surprised by what I learned and how much I wanted to place an order!”