A small herd of 70-odd goats bleats and canters away as Cynthia and Terry Bechter-Smith walk into their 19th century barn on Goatfeathers Point Farm in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The creatures have slender curving horns and thick matted fur that keeps them warm in the winter. The smell of goat poop fills the barn.

"I like to say that a happy goat is a tasty goat," Cynthia says, reaching down to pet one of the goats that she bottle-fed after it was born sick. While you can find goat meat at the supermarket, she explains, there's just no comparison in taste and quality. "Our goats are pasture-raised, young and healthy. The goat that you find at the supermarket is usually imported - and it's from older, feral goats."

While Terry admits that it's "not a white guy kind of food just yet," goat is actually incredibly common, he tells me. It comprises 80 percent of the red meat eaten in the world, he says. These two modern-day goatherders run a 37-acre goat farm in Peninsula, Ohio. They've found an untapped market for goat among immigrant communities from Africa, Asia and elsewhere that reside in Northeast Ohio.

"We've sold our goats through ethnic markets, and through word of mouth," Cynthia says. Demand has not been a problem: "It's more of a problem for the consumer than for us - good goat meat is hard to find." They've also sold goat meat to area restaurants, including Fire at Shaker Square.

You also can't just walk into Dave's Supermarket, untether a goat and stroll up to the register. Yet at Goatfeathers Point Farm, live goats are what they sell. "They buy the whole goat," Terry says of his regular customers, adding that "you're still allowed to do backyard slaughter in most places." The farmers also process some of the meat - in other words, it's also available sans fur.

"What does it taste like?" a reporter asks.

"I think it tastes like venison," says Terry.

His wife adds, "People also say that it tastes like lamb, but milder."

"How do you cook it?"

"It's mostly used in stews," says Terry. "Mexicans tend to like it roasted on an open fire. Pretty much anything you can do with lamb, you can do with goat."

Maybe it's the confused look on my face. Cynthia shrugs and looks at her husband. We know that people think we're weird, her look says. You can tell that they've had this conversation before.

"People eat goat in every place except North America," says Cynthia. "We look at a goat and say, "It's a cute animal.' They look at a goat and say, "Mmmm, good! Let's have a party!'"

The herd at Goatfeathers Point is about 70 strong right now, and Cynthia and Terry are hoping to build it up a bit further. In cold-weather climates, the female goats typically get pregnant in the fall and give birth to one-three kids in the spring. The goats are sold when they are between 1 and a half and 2 years old. The farmers keep the bucks and the breeding does, and sell off the younger guys.

"It's tough to be a boy goat," says Cynthia with a shrug. She gestures toward a double-wide she-goat that's staring at us and lazily chewing on some hay. "She's pregnant - that's why she's so big," says Cynthia. The mother goats take care of the birthing process without any help, other than Terry and Cynthia standing by to make sure that everyone stays healthy.

The three of us walk outside of the barn behind the goats, which have trampled the snow down on a small patch of still-frozen ground. It's the third day of spring, but the valley is covered with several inches of fluffy snow. Apparently, the goats don't like it - the farmers have no need to put up electric fences in the winter because the goats won't venture out into the white stuff on their own.

Terry and Cynthia haven't always wanted to be goat farmers. She grew up in Akron, while he grew up in a rural part of Ohio in the '60s. "I was scared away from farming back then," he says. "We lived next door to a chicken farm where they had one long building with 50,000 chickens cooped up in pens. They weren't out pecking in the grass."

These days, Terry and Cynthia are not only goat-farm entrepreneurs; they are also farming inside a national park. Several years ago, the couple applied to a program managed by the Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy that leases old farms to small farmers that come up with an idea and a plan. Mountains of paperwork and a few years later, Cynthia and Terry were set up on 37 acres with a remodeled 19th century farmhouse and a barn.

The Countryside Conservancy program is an attempt to rejuvenate small-scale, sustainable farming in the valley. Since launching in 2001, eight farms have been established within the park. It's a unique effort that's being closely watched in other states; the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is one of the few parks in the country that's actively promoting farming.

The Countryside Conservancy plans to release its fourth request for proposals on April 15, making three additional farms available within the park. The group will accept applications from prospective farmers 60 days later, spend about two months reviewing them and select the next batch by the end of August.

These are "real farmers on real farms doing real farming," Countryside Conservancy Director Darwin Kelsey likes to say. Yet these farms are not throwbacks to a bygone era, but rather, "They're more about the future than the past." Some of these other farms include Basket of Life, a community-supported agriculture (CSA) effort that offers weekly shares of locally grown fruit and vegetables; Sarah's Vineyard, a local winery; and the Spicy Lamb Farm, a new farm that will sell lamb meat, herbs and apples, and also offer tours.

All of the farms in the CVNP offer educational programming. In the past year, Terry and Cynthia have hosted groups ranging from University of Akron researchers to senior gardeners to pre-school students. "Some of the kids don't know much about where their food comes from," says Terry.

Terry and Cynthia would like to be full-time farmers, but that's just not realistic right now. She works as a quality manager at Quality Synthetic Rubber; Terry is a former engineer who now works as a flight instructor.

"There are lifestyle benefits to what we do - we're able to be outside a lot," Cynthia says. "It's just hard to build a farm and really difficult to make any money at it. Our long-term goal is for at least one of us to be here full-time. Health insurance is the hardest part."

Terry winces when he talks about fixing the tractor. That means driving about 60 miles for parts. The decline in family farming in Northeast Ohio has meant that the infrastructure for small-scale farmers isn't always accessible.

This summer, Terry and Cynthia are hoping to launch a new program, taking advantage of goats' proclivity to eat pretty much anything. If you own land that needs regular mowing, you can leave your riding mower in the garage. They'll bring a goat over to your property, fence off a piece of your land and, for a small fee, let the goat do the mowing. It's better for the environment, easier for the landowner, and it helps out the farmers, who can feed more goats.

What do they call the program? "Rent a Goat," of course.