Soulful Prima Donnas

While the second kid is trying to climb on your lap, a light breeze caresses your face. Four soulful eyes, the two nannies lying at your feet, gaze at you knowingly. And just before you actually start wondering what it might be, suddenly this serene peace seems to fall out of the sky like a deus ex machina tenderly and carefully blanketing everything.

Totally in sync with nature, time just stops and nothing else matters.
Simply you in the shade under the tree, the goats, and the birds…

That serenity is an intrinsic part of Aletta’s organic solar-powered goat farm Semper Kontentu, always content in Papiamento. Her meat and dairy prima donnas are providing Bonaire with goat cheese, yoghurt, milk, and meat for over twelve years now. What once started as a ten-goats-hobby besides her day job as a physical therapist, has become a full time occupation and a professional farm with no less than seventy goats in total. All of them belonging to the carefully mixed and very popular South African Boer goat-Anglo Nubian family, which Semper Kontentu doesn’t keep for its robust and attractive appearance, or for its high quality diary or meat for that matter. These purebreds are ideal for the Bonairean climate with its desert-like heat and drought during the dry seasons. Moreover, besides their beauty Boer goats are known to have a high resistance to disease and just like their Anglo-Nubian sisters they adapt well to hot and dry semi deserts.

In other words: a perfect combination of species. Since the born and bred Bonairean divas don’t get any hormones or antibiotics and they roam about together with their kids inside the traditional Bonairean cactus fence boundaries of Aletta’s 4.5 hectare land, eating whatever garden waste the island’s two nurseries leave behind for them, they might have to depend on this natural and genetically determined high resistance. Of course Aletta also gives the does some feed concentrates to supplement their grazing and forage. The milk, cheese and meat, however, are hormone and antibiotics free.

If you would like to experience the serenity of Aletta’s farm, learn how to milk a goat, get to know the prima donnas up close and personal or just wander around on a real Bonairean kunuku (piece of farmland) and have an unforgettable fun morning, you should definitely visit Semper Kontentu and join the tour. At the end of the 1½-hour tour you are served some homemade tasty refreshments like cold raw goat milk, cheese, yoghurt, and ice tea in the shade under the tree while you are overlooking the farm. 

It’s about an eight kilometers drive from the church at the roundabout in the center via the Kaya Korona to the road to Rincon. Just follow the road to Rincon, go left when you see the sign of Semper Kontentu at your left, and seek out the white stones further inland. Be aware though you might get overtaken by a serene peace and find yourself dreaming outside of time, once you get there.