Teens receive loan to start goat farm

SPENCER, Ind. – High school students who created a business plan detailing the market potential they see in the rising demand for goat meat in Indiana will get a $28,000 school district loan to open a goat farm.\nSpencer-Owen school board members voted 5-2 Thursday to finance the seven-acre farm, which will be run by Owen Valley High School students about 15 miles northwest of Bloomington.\nThe students will work together to raise and market Boer goats to Indiana’s growing number of ethnic groups that favor goat meat. They’ll pay back the loan through their meat sales.\n“I was skeptical at first whether we could make it work, but the more we got into it, I realized all the support we had,” said Owen Valley junior Kameron Blake. “We had to convince people it would work.”\nThe students already had taken bids for construction of a 30-by-50-foot barn and a fence around seven acres near McCormick’s Creek Elementary School, where the district owns 83 acres.