A musician friend just bought a rather neglected property on a small lake in Seattle. She’s a really energetic person and will no doubt have a great time diving into the project of renovating the house and grounds. In fact, she’s already started on the overgrown yard, with a little help from some friends…
Goats! She got them (temporarily) from a local business, The Goat Lady, who hires them out for a quiet, natural way to clear brambles and other tenacious overgrowth. With the copious amounts of blackberries at my friend’s place, five goats couldn’t get through it all in one day. They took a break for the holidays/snow but will be back to finish the job soon.
This is such a cool way to take care of a tough gardening job! You arrange to have the goats delivered, check on them a couple of times per day to make sure they’re not tangled up in their tethers, give them once a day water and feed, and that’s that! Super cheap too, $25 per goat per week if you have 5 or more, $30 per goat if you have 4 or fewer. Dump fees alone for that volume of brush would probably top that, not to mention labor, pollution from gas-powered tools, or even backhoe rental for a job of that magnitude. To learn more about the goats, click here.
Apparently this is not the only business of this sort in Washington State. Here’s a link to a Seattle city page about using another company’s goats to clear brush at a power plant not far from our house.
In the city of Seattle, it is now legal to keep up to three pygmy goats, as long as they are de-horned. Goats in the city! For a news article about this, click here.
Finally, if you have a few minutes to spare and click on this link, you can watch the goats in action at my friend’s place. She put some funny background music in to complement their munchings. Which goat is your favorite? I like the black and white one with the stripey face myself.
