There is a house in Mt Pleas­ant, To­ba­go, where per­haps the sis­ter isle’s youngest dairy farmer lives.

Nine-year-old Keri Al­fred al­ready knows how to make an as­sort­ment of cheese as well as a va­ri­ety of flavoured milk-prod­ucts—all made from goat’s milk.

In fact, her fa­ther, Ker­ry Ri­car­do Al­fred, a uni­ver­si­ty-de­greed an­i­mal sci­en­tist and live­stock spe­cial­ist, boasts that if he is not around, the younger Al­fred knows ex­act­ly what to do.

But don’t think it a mat­ter of child labour though, as Keri acts in an as­sis­tant’s role in the fam­i­ly busi­ness and even told the Sun­day Guardian that help­ing in her fam­i­ly’s ‘hus­tle’ has pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed her ed­u­ca­tion.

“It helps me to fo­cus in school, as it teach­es me how to try un­til some­thing is achieved,” Ker­ry said.

More spe­cif­ic to the sub­ject of agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence, she de­scribes it as a “breeze,” adding it gives her a lit­tle bit of an ad­van­tage over her class­mates.

Re­cent­ly, the Stan­dard Three Lam­beau An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School stu­dent was recog­nised for a school project in which she did very well.

The project came out of the pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum and in­volved tak­ing an agri­cul­tur­al pri­ma­ry prod­uct and con­vert­ing it in­to a val­ue-added prod­uct.

It was a ‘no brain­er’ for Keri. Be­ing al­ready fa­mil­iar with such a process, she chose to cre­ate a pre­mi­um goat cheese, fin­ished with at­trac­tive and classy pack­ag­ing.

Keri rep­re­sents three gen­er­a­tions of live­stock farm­ing in the Al­fred fam­i­ly, as dad­dy Al­fred re­vealed he con­tin­ued his fa­ther’s choice of liveli­hood, mind­ing rab­bits then sheep. He did this af­ter he re­turned in 1995 from at­tend­ing agri­cul­ture school in Guyana, where he com­plet­ed the Re­gion­al Ed­u­ca­tion­al Pro­gramme for An­i­mal Health As­sis­tance (REPA­HA) and at­tained a diplo­ma in live­stock man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion.

It was at sev­en years old, he said, that he first no­ticed his daugh­ter’s se­ri­ous in­ter­est in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the fam­i­ly’s busi­ness, af­ter she al­so be­gan get­ting live­stock from com­plete strangers.

“Keri’s God­fa­ther, who is a vet­eri­nar­i­an, would take her around with him on house vis­its and every time she came back, some­one they vis­it­ed would call and say ‘Mr Al­fred, I have a kid or a lamb for your daugh­ter’.”

Keri soon ac­quired six sheep and two goats. Per­haps hav­ing a “bright idea” mo­ment or just ex­hibit­ing the nat­ur­al en­tre­pre­neur in her­self, she soon asked her fa­ther, “‘Dad­dy, ‘ent’ we can sell milk every day?’”

So the sheep were sold and they de­cid­ed goat’s milk was go­ing to be the main agri­cul­tur­al pri­ma­ry prod­uct in their busi­ness en­ter­prise.

Be­gin­ning with re­tailed goat milk, Al­fred said a de­ci­sion was al­so tak­en on the ad­vice of his daugh­ter to “flavour” the milk, since she be­lieved every­one one may not en­joy it plain.

Laugh­ing, the proud fa­ther added, “She came up with vanil­la and choco­late and a test batch was made.”

Need­less to say, the tri­al was suc­cess­ful and the busi­ness was called Ker­riyah Farms - a name de­rived from the com­bin­ing of the names of his three daugh­ters - Keri, Kayah and Kallaeyah. They went on to al­so con­ceive an as­sort­ment of goat cheese, rang­ing from plain to herbs and spices, to hick­o­ry and gar­lic, and they are prepar­ing to add yo­ghurt to the Ker­riyah line in Sep­tem­ber.

To her peers, how­ev­er, Keri might seem dif­fer­ent. Af­ter all, what av­er­age nine-year-old spends time milk­ing a goat and mak­ing goat milk-based prod­ucts, once her home­work and stud­ies are com­plete of course?

She said, “They ask me all the time how I make the prod­ucts and why I have goats and so many an­i­mals?”

But this is of no both­er at all to the lit­tle busi­ness­woman, whose fa­ther notes, “She likes to count mon­ey and is al­ways find­ing a way to make mon­ey.”

That aside, it’s al­so a sim­ple joy for Keri, who finds what’s in­ter­est­ing about help­ing in her fam­i­ly busi­ness is the sat­is­fy­ing feel­ing she gets at watch­ing peo­ple en­joy the fin­ished prod­ucts of the Ker­riyah brand.

De­spite her ear­ly suc­cess, the en­ter­pris­ing young la­dy has dreams of one day be­com­ing a vet­eri­nar­i­an but al­so vows she has no plan of aban­don­ing her fam­i­ly’s busi­ness in the fu­ture.

“I’ll do them both,” she said.

She al­so had some ad­vice for young am­bi­tious minds like hers.

“You are nev­er too young to try any­thing new or to de­cide what ca­reer path you would take.”