On Saturday, students and community members flocked to the Kenyon Farm to indulge in an unusual delicacy: goat meat. The Farm’s Goat Roast, which was held for the first time in several years, also featured live music, student vendors and vegetarian and vegan options like fruit salad and chocolate-chip cookies.

The farmers began advertising the roast in February, soon after they came up with the idea to bring back the event. Most of the Farm’s goats had been processed and frozen in mid-December, and the Farm took that opportunity to plan the unique feast. According to Ian Prescott ’23, a student farmer, the farmers spent months organizing the event — working with the Horn Gallery to bring student bands to the roast, coordinating with AVI for catering and soliciting students and organizations to sell handmade crafts.

There was no shortage of adventurous eaters willing to make the 15-minute trek from campus down to the Farm and experience what was, for many, their first taste of goat. Unfortunately, demand for the meat greatly exceeded the supply, and the goat ran out less than an hour into the three-hour roast, leaving many students disappointed.

Desmond Dietz ’25, one of the lucky students who arrived early enough to taste the goat, enjoyed it. “[It was] different from other meat that I’ve had. Not tough, but substantial,” Dietz said. 

“We were very surprised by how popular it was,” Prescott said. “The amount of goat we had was enough to serve maybe 150 people, assuming not everybody was doubling up or going back for seconds. The extent of people that showed up in the first place was overwhelming, but it was very good to see everybody come out.”

Despite the goat shortage, students still enjoyed their time listening to live music from various student bands, socializing in the sun and exploring the prints, jewelry and T-shirts sold by student vendors. 

Ammar Raslan ’26, one of the vendors at the roast, sold handmade Bedouin bags made by his mother in Egypt. According to Raslan, she made them over the course of a year and gave them to him over winter break. 

“[Bedouin bags] are a very local industry in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and it’s kind of diminishing. So my mom just wanted to do them,” Raslan said. “The amount of people and the amount of joy that I’m seeing is amazing. That has no equal.”

In light of the roast’s success, Prescott hopes that the Farm will hold similar events in the future. “I think it was an amazing event — really exceeded my expectations,” Prescott said. “We’re really hoping that next year — we might not do a goat roast, we might do something different like a pig roast, say — but we’re really hoping to engage more with our surrounding community. We had a lot of good student turnout there, but we hope to see more professors, staff and anybody else living in the area … show up because we really want to make it a public event where people can come down and experience the farm.”