The road to Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery runs northeast out of Champaign, past the last strip malls and into flat, open country, until you reach a working dairy that most people in town know for its cheese and its goats. On Tuesday, September 29, the farm will host its Tuesday Happy Hour Goat Hike, a two-hour evening event that begins at 5:30 p.m. and sends visitors out across the pasture and pond in the company of the herd.
The hike is a guided walk of roughly a mile and a half, led by the farm's seasoned volunteers and knowledgeable staff. The route explores the eastern portion of the farm, following the pasture, passing along a pond, and threading through wooded ground, with plenty of scenic stops for photos. The terrain is uneven, and the farm asks hikers to wear clothes they can move in and don't mind getting dirty, along with sturdy shoes. The walk itself takes about 30 to 45 minutes, and it is open to ages eight and up, a restriction the farm frames as a matter of safety for children. At the conclusion, each hiker gets a beverage of their choice, up to $12, from the farm's bar.
But the part everyone waits for is the running of the goats. It is exactly what it sounds like: the herd, released or encouraged along a stretch of the farm, moving as a group in a way that has become the signature spectacle of these hikes. The farm's own listing calls it "everyone's favorite part of the hike," and it is the reason the event has the feel of a small local tradition rather than a standard farm tour.
The story of how a Champaign-Urbana farm ended up with a herd of goats and a happy-hour hike begins more than two decades ago. Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery was founded in 2004 by Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell, two professors of soil and environmental sciences who left an urban academic life in Madison, Wisconsin, and bought a small farm just north of Champaign-Urbana. They transformed what had been cash-grain row-crop land into a perennial landscape of goat pastures, organic fruit orchards, and restored prairie.
Cooperband has said she came to cheesemaking through her love of eating cheese. At the downtown Madison farmers market, she fell for the French-style goat cheeses made by Anne Topham of Fantome Farm, one of the women pioneers of French-style cheese in the 1980s, and asked Topham question after question, filing the answers away for later. In 2004 the couple planted a small organic fruit orchard and bought their first goats — four Nubians, three does and one buck. In 2005, the farm was licensed as a Grade A goat dairy and farmstead creamery, and Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery was officially born. It was the first operation in Illinois to produce French-style goat cheeses.
The herd grew. The farm now raises nearly 100 goats, a mix of Nubian and La Mancha, in a rotational pasture system, and the herd earned Animal Welfare Approved certification in 2010 — a designation given to livestock raised outdoors on pasture for their entire lives, and widely considered the gold standard for livestock production. The land is managed as silvopasture, an old agricultural practice that integrates trees and pasture into a single system; the farm's cottonwood trees shade the herd in extreme heat, and pastures with trees sequester several times as much carbon as treeless ones. The cheeses, mostly French-inspired and rooted in the deep prairie soils, have won national recognition, including multiple first-place medals at the American Cheese Society's annual competition.
In February 2024, the farm entered a new chapter. Cooperband and Jarrell sold it to Lauren and Jeffrey Brokish, who own Salt Fork Foodworks, a central Illinois food group that includes Martinelli's Market, Central Illinois Bakehouse, Pekara Bakery & Bistro, and Espresso Royale. Neither of the Brokishes came from a traditional farming background, but they brought deep experience in food and hospitality, and they kept the cheesemaking operation and staff intact while adding new layers — most visibly Caprae, a fine-dining farm-to-table restaurant on the property, along with a larger retail cheese shop and a classroom. The farm has since expanded its slate of educational programming well beyond cheese, offering classes in everything from pasta making to basket weaving to forest bathing.
The goat hikes sit at the center of that agritourism push. The farm runs them on several days of the week, and each day has its own twist: the Thursday hikes conclude with a cocktail in the bar, and the Saturday hikes are followed by a cheese tasting. For the fitness-minded, there are even Go-lates classes — goat Pilates — on Tuesday evenings. The Tuesday Happy Hour Hike is the weekday version, timed for the end of the workday and capped with a drink.
There is one caveat worth knowing before you go. The farm cancels goat hikes when temperatures or the heat index climb above 90 degrees, for the safety of the goats, guests, and staff; in that case it offers a refund or a reschedule. Hikes are also held outdoors and may be called off for inclement weather. Tickets can be purchased in advance, or at the farm at least 15 minutes before the hike is scheduled to begin. Note that the event's listing on the Chambana events calendar shows admission as free, but the farm's own ticketing page lists the hike at $20 per person — the beverage is included in that price, not the hike itself.
For anyone who has driven past the farm on North Lincoln Avenue and wondered about the goats in the pasture, the Tuesday Happy Hour Hike is the invitation to walk out among them — across the uneven ground, past the pond, through the trees, and then, at the end, to watch the herd run.