This is a brief update to my Goats as Landscapers post.
This is a busy week. One of my nieces is graduating from Ole Miss and I have a bunch of family arriving this week to celebrate. I’ve been trying to clean up the property from all the downed trees and heavy storms we’ve had lately. It seems that’s an ongoing chore.
When it comes to lawns the goats can be a huge disadvantage or a massive help. Flowers and most landscaping that’s in reach of their height often get “cleaned” whether I want them to or not. I’ve given up on having a nicely landscaped home. It’s become a dream of mine to move to a larger property with a house that’s solidly protected by fencing so I can actually have flowers again…and a pretty home exterior. Sigh, anyway…
When it comes to storm clean up the goats are my small army, my little forces of nature. They see downed trees, limbs and leaves and they yell at me until I set them free to their own personal buffets.
I’ve come to enjoy watching them work. As they run out of the pen to their freedom the sight of leaves littering the lawn makes them act like vacuum cleaners. The literally slurp up any leaf – green or brown – like noodles. The lawn starts looking better and I don’t have to rake.
When it comes to downed limbs and trees, many of which are far too heavy for me to drag to the fire pit by myself the goats enjoy stripping them down of any needles, leaves and bark. This makes the debris easier to move.
I have to get back to prepping for visitors but here’s a picture update of the goat pen, before the goats had access and currently:
Previously the pen was impenetrable due to vines and thorn bushes. You couldn’t see the road at all:
Here’s another view from the driveway:
This is after the goats ate their way through. They completely cleared an incredible amount of vines and thorn bushes:
As you can see, I still have a lot of work to do to get the pen looking better. I prefer to leave large stumps and downed trees for the goats to play on, they love them.
Now the sun can reach the ground. Smaller hardwood trees that were suffering from the weight and darkness of the vines will grow stronger. The goats will kill some of the smaller trees, unfortunately, but the strong trees won’t have to compete for sun or nutrients and should grow well.
I tried seeding the area before spring but the turkeys and chickens caught me in the act and ate the seeds…of course. I was concerned the ground would be bare but it seems nature had a plan. Now that the sun hits the ground you can see grasses and greenery filling in the brown areas. With a little more clean up the goats should have a pretty sweet day pen.