Note: Have you ever wonder why Bluffton has so many large old "garages" in some of the older neighborhoods? The reason is that these building housed a range of animals from horses, cows, chickens and even goats. This story is about one family and their goats.

Before there was a Dr. Alan Yoder, optometrist, in Bluffton, there was a Dr. Gordon Bixel, optometrist.

His tenure checking Bluffton’s eye dated back to the 1930s all the way to his retirement in the mid-1960s.

As a point of reference, Gordon and his wife, Margaret, and their children, David, Donald, and Betty, originally lived on Spring Street.

Most Icon viewers know this as the Dick and Margaret Weaver house. Later the Bixels moved to the large dark red brick house south of the Dari Freeze on Main Street.

Gordon had sinus problems causing him to lose sleep. His doctor told him that he was allergic to cow’s milk. His solution was to buy goats for milking.

At least one of Gordon’s sons also was allergic to cow’s milk.

So, a space was made inside the Bixel Spring Street “barn” with a milking platform at one side and a large pen outside.

The procedure for goat milk required it to be put through a cloth sieve and then refrigerated. As the family became used to drinking goat’s milk they discovered it was creamier than cow’s milk and that’s what they preferred.

There were several Bixel goats. One of the goats was called Patsy. She gave birth to triplets, much to the surprise of the Bixels. Then, another goat gave birth to triplets, so you see that goats and the Bixel family in this small town became intertwined.

Intertwined so, much so, that according to our sources, one of the Bixel son’s nickname was “Goatie.”

Dick Boehr tells us that the Bixels had a built-in goat milking chambers and had good facilities for the goats. Dick was close in age to the Bixel children and was milking cows at his family farm at this time, so the Bixels let him milk the goats from time to time.

Dick also recalls that the Bixels had large Cherry trees in their yard, so Dick’s brother and Dick would be invited to pick all they could get for a 50/50 split.

To provide some fun, the Bixels trained the goats to pull a cart on their Spring Street yard. The Bixels also had their goats in several Bluffton parades.

The accompanying photos show the Bixel children with some of their goats. Today the Bixels goats are part of forgotten Bluffton.

Information from this story is from Dick Boehr and from a booklet “Growing Up on Spring Street,” by Betty Bixel Miller Jeschke.