(Published in print: Thursday, March 24, 2016)
A cheesemaker and neighbors complaining about the smell of her goats’ manure have agreed to seek a mediator, as she tries to stifle the smell by hauling the manure to a composter each time she mucks out the stalls.
“I’m really sorry for any suffering you’ve had because of my goats,” Sarah Laeng-Gilliatt, owner of Main Street Cheese, apologized to four neighbors at a Select Board meeting Monday. “I’m fully committed to remedying the smell and the flies.”
Laeng-Gilliatt puts up her 13 goats in a hoop house on part of 3 Main St. she leases from the Stevenses, the homeowners there. She produces and sells the cheese about a quarter-mile down Main Street. While the hoop house is in the historic district, Hancock’s zoning ordinance does not restrict agriculture anywhere in town. The Select Board said the Planning Board does not intend to amend the ordinance to order otherwise, although it said the board discussed it at length recently.
After Laeng-Gilliatt and her staff muck out the stalls in the hoop house, they haul the manure to a compost pile a few steps outside. Ideal Compost of Peterborough then freights the manure away once in the spring, once in the summer and once in the fall. Once it starts to snow, the compost truck can’t reach the pile. The manure builds up all winter, and isn’t hauled away again until the snow melts and the muddy path to the pile dries. Not surprisingly, the smell is worst in the spring.
After Laeng-Gilliatt moved her to goats to 3 Main St. in 2014, neighbors started to complain. They eventually requested the Select Board intervene. If the smell can’t be remedied, they wrote in a letter to the board in February, could the board offer them tax abatements or force Laeng-Gilliatt to move her goats.
Laeng-Gilliatt has attempted to smother the smell. She follows the N.H. Department of Agriculture Markets and Foods’ best management practices for handling manure. She switched the lime product she applies to the compost, applies it more frequently and aerates it more often. She even reduced her herd from 20 goats to 13 goats. The most radical concession she has made yet is having the manure hauled away three times per week, she said.
“[The N.H. Agriculture Commissioner and a University of New Hampshire dairy expert] both agree that though these are drastic steps that will have a big impact on our labor costs, these measures will certainly meet our overarching goal, which is not to not bother any of you,” she wrote in a letter addressed to the neighbors and Select Board March 18.
However, Laeng-Gilliatt asked neighbors be patient as the mud in the path dries.
The board, meanwhile, recommended Laeng-Gilliatt and the neighbors request the services of the N.H. Agricultural Mediation Program under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The neighbors repeatedly said Monday they don’t oppose farming or livestock. They just oppose it near homes or downtown.“We’re not anti-agriculture. We’re not anti all the things Sarah is referring to. We’re just anti-three to four tons sitting there,” said Mary Covington.