First off, it is worth saying that from this point on, the ingenious Mr. W. who is quite a photography whiz has taken most of the photos you will see.
While we were in the process of readying the house for sale I got to work on figuring out what animals we would keep and generally coming up with a plan for those that we could not keep. I take pet ownership pretty seriously, feeling that once in my care I’ve accepted an obligation. The first order of business was goats. Now, the reason I have goats is because many moons ago the W’s lived in Virginia, a place absolutely crawling with poison ivy. It became readily apparent that I’m one of those people with a very severe reaction to even the tiniest amount of ivy but since we had a little farm we really needed a way to clean it up so I wasn’t constantly coming into contact with the toxic stuff. So we came to having goats.
Fast forward 8 years and we still have goats, only one of the originals (Ms. Sumac) and three that were obtained to keep her company. Since Ms. Sumac and her friend Roberta are older and (as far as I can imagine) not really useful to anyone, I decided we should keep them. Goats live to maybe 14 or 15 and both of these ladies are around 9 or 10. The other two goats are a different story, they are Cashmere does and while not especially friendly they do produce good fiber and are young enough to breed. I turned to my friend the Internet and after a lot of searching I found this company:
This turned out wonderfully – Lani, who owns the company, takes her herd of up to 1000 goats all around the west and southwest having them graze weeds from areas like parks! I ask you, is there a better job anywhere for a goat? Of course not! So, my girls, Sticker and Thorn went off to become professional weed eaters and we got the unexpected benefit of having our remaining old lady goats settle down peaceably. Indeed I think they are happier as two old spinster goats than as part of a herd.
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