Lucky and Blessed

What the goats left behind

2008-10-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it?! The goats took 3 days to do this. Actually they took about 2 and 1/2 days. It was hot early this week and they slow down on their eating when it's hot. Penny decided to keep them over night on Tuesday because the moon was full and she expected they would just keep eating -- which they did. She told me the next day that at about midnight they all suddenly got frisky and started playing and running up and down the hill.

Goats in the hood!

2008-10-17T07:20:00.001-07:00

Here are a few more photos of the goats on the day they arrived, Monday October 13. I was concerned that neighbors would fuss but everyone seemed to love seeing the goats. At one point Shelley and Penny had about 20 people inside the electric fence petting the goats and asking all the usual questions.

Goats to the rescue!

2008-10-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

This morning 15 goats arrived at the future home of Lucky and Blessed Garden to tackle a dense kudzu thicket at our home in downtown Asheville. Kudzu, a wonderful plant but dangerously invasive in the Southern US, is very difficult to erradicate because it stores energy deep in the earth in a large tuber and spreads by sinking roots every foot or so along its rapidly growing vine. I could have had a bull-dozer come in to rip out the vines and dig down till we found the root. Bull-dozing would have been very expensive, destroyed the fertile soil underneath the kudzu, used a lot of fossil fuels and made a lot of noise. Instead I called Penny and Shelley at Got Your Goat Weed Management.

Goats are quiet, they fertilize and aerate the soil, they are affordable and they are super cute. After the goats eat up all the kudzu, I'll remove the dead vines and find the primary root limb. Then I'll cut it off and quickly dap some Round Up onto the cut. In early autumn, plants are bringing energy back down into their root systems in preparation for dormancy in winter. So the Round Up placed strategically will kill the big tuber deep down. I may end up digging that big tuber out, but it will be a targeted dig rather than destroying the entire lot.