Jean Harrison, age 13, poses with Patches at her first livestock show at the San Mateo County Fair in California. (Courtesy of Jean Harrison)
Home on the World Wide Range
Maker Musings: Jean Harrison
Jean Harrison is the founder of EasyKeeper.net, a web-based goat herd management system that connects farmers across the country. No ‘kid’ding.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
That’s the phrase Jean Harrison uses to sign her emails.
She took her first foray into management at 13, when a friend convinced her to join 4-H, a youth program tied to the U.S. Department of Agriculture that fosters livestock interests, among other topics. Harrison wanted to raise a llama, but when discouraged by the lofty cost to purchase and raise the then-exotic animal, she settled for a secondhand goat.
“I think in my 13-year-old brain, a goat was as close to a llama as I could get,” she said.
She rescued Ivy Leaf from a farm where the animal had been reduced to being a guinea pig for local boys’ roping techniques. Ivy Leaf descended from a line of successful show animals, but the misshapen brown-and-black dairy goat placed second at a livestock show where she had no competition.
“She needed a friend,” Harrison said.
In turn, Ivy Leaf became Harrison’s closest companion when the teen moved from Pacifica, Calif., to northern California before starting high school. Raising Ivy Leaf became as normal as homework. Harrison even wrote about the easy keeper—a farm term used to describe a low-maintenance animal—for a school writing assignment. (The paper’s topic? Write about your best friend.)
Farming 2.0
Harrison is an easy keeper. More gaga-for-goats than girly-girl, she described her outfit—blue jeans, tan knit shirt and brown clogs—as dressed up as she gets.
Jean Harrison works at the Reno Collective. (Photo by Christine Seiber)
Lunch was a microwave meal from Trader Joe’s—the result of a 70-hour workweek filled with meetings and plugging away at her desk at the Reno Collective.
“Part of being an easy keeper is you don’t need a lot of food,” Harrison said, laughing.
Her husband, Dave Benjamin, describes Harrison with another word—tenacious. Her dairy goat herd prospered through the 1980s and early 90s. After a decade of working as a software project engineer for various startups, Harrison carved a career out of a hobby by launching EasyKeeper.net in 2009 without seeking investor funding.
Noting the lack of management software for goat farmers, Harrison market-tested her idea with contacts forged at livestock shows as to what the web-based service needed to include. EasyKeeper allows goat farmers to maintain health, breeding and birth records and track the animal’s dairy, meat or fiber production. The service, which rolled out a paid subscription package in October 2012, also allows customers to add data to the site for other farmers to use.
Jan Fleming, a 23-year veteran goat farmer in Franklin, Pa., heard about EasyKeeper through friends in California. She offered to beta test the website in 2012.
“It’s just wonderful to have somebody that knows what producers want and need,” Fleming said. “It’s a much better program than keeping index cards or notebooks or sticky notes.”
Harrison wants to expand EasyKeeper to all livestock—potentially tapping into Nevada’s booming cattle market—but she urges entrepreneurs to delve into market research. She cited goat farming’s shift from dairy to meat production.
“What I didn’t do is look at what the industry is doing,” she said. “I missed a huge opportunity because I started out creating a program for dairy goats. I stayed in my safe zone.”
“What I didn’t do is look at what the industry is doing,” she said. “I missed a huge opportunity because I started out creating a program for dairy goats. I stayed in my safe zone.”
New ‘kid’ on the block
When Dave Benjamin shared a kindergarten kiss with Harrison in Pacifica, Calif., he had no idea he would eventually reconnect with and marry the girl with the goats . The pair relocated their online businesses—Benjamin’s site manufactures and distributes sailboat sails—to Reno from the Bay Area in 2013.
“We jokingly refer to the companies as ‘Boats and Goats,’” said Benjamin, who also handles business development for EasyKeeper.
The decision to move to Reno was sealed after attending the city’s 1 Million Cups event, where local entrepreneurs present their startups to their peers, advisors and potential stakeholders. At that particular session, Harrison heard the pitch for GirlMade (ahem, us).
“I’m like, ‘This is where I want to be because here is a community that’s really encouraging female entrepreneurs,’” she said.
“I’m like, ‘This is where I want to be because here is a community that’s really encouraging female entrepreneurs,’” she said.
Harrison and Benjamin live in what Harrison calls a “transitional home,” as the couple settles into Reno. For now, the only goats in her life are the ones on the calendar hanging next to her desk and the stuffed animal her sister gave her when Harrison had a daughter in 1985. As she delves into a marketing campaign for EasyKeeper, there’s no time for a sprawling homestead with grazing goats.
“I know me well enough to know that I would go hog-wild,” Harrison said. “… I don’t want to have any distractions—as much as I would love to be able to sit and have baby goats jump on me, because it’s so good for the soul.”
