Putting Goats to Work

The New York Times has a wonderful story about farmers with goats being hired to clear out-of-control kudzu vines in Tennessee.

Chattanooga’s goats have become unofficial city mascots since the Public Works Department decided last year to let them roam a city-owned section of the ridge to nibble the kudzu, the fast-growing vine that throttles the Southern landscape.

The Missionary Ridge goats and the project’s tragicomic turns have created headlines, inspired a folk ballad and invoked more than their share of goat-themed chuckles.

[snip]

On Missionary Ridge, which bisects Chattanooga and where homes command stunning views of the valley below, the battle with kudzu is constant. Of particular worry for the city were vines that draped over the mouth of the McCallie Tunnel, which cuts through the ridge.

Enter the goats. Mr. Jeansonne, after reading an article on the subject, persuaded city officials to hire a local farmer to graze his herd over the tunnel. When the farmer released the herd last fall, the experiment took some unexpected turns. Pranksters put up “goats working” signs. City officials took them down, with some stern words.

Guard donkeys accompanying the herd earned more guffaws and proved ineffective when dogs attacked, killing two goats and mauling a third. This year, llamas replaced the donkeys.
There have been the logistical problems of goat-proof fences, gawkers and the live electric wire. Mr. Jeansonne himself roped an escapee and hauled it back to the pen.

But the headaches have been worth it, he said. Walking a fence line, he held one hand high to show the height of the kudzu before the herd was released. The vines are gone now from the tunnel and the hillside above, some areas newly planted with grass.

“It was kudzu up to an elephant’s eye,” Mr. Jeansonne said.

[snip]

The city plans to use goats to clear the tunnel’s east entrance, and recently, officials sponsored a four-day academy for farmers, hoping to stimulate a micro-industry of kudzu-fighting herds-for-hire.

Attention enterprising yeoman farmers! This could be a great business opportunity.

As for us, we've had mixed results with getting goats to clear big swaths of brush. They certainly do eat it --- but they also eat all the things you don't want them to eat. That means goats can't simply be turned loose on a cultivated property. The portable electric fencing would probably help; that's not something we've investigated. (We don't have any kind of electric fencing on the property, for fear that our small children would get tangled in it.)

Farewell, FDR!

I recently posted about our rural electric co-op, and how they are getting ready to replace some of the power lines and transformers in our area. They're now almost finished, and I'm surprised they've been able to do it without shutting our power off for more than a couple of hours at a time.

The chief manager with the project told us that the infrastructure they're replacing dates to the 1940s! He's fairly confident that it went up as part of a New Deal era rural electrification, and that our section of the county did not have electricity before that.

We've been quite fortunate that the last few winters have been so mild. With lines and poles this old, one more bad ice storm could've taken down quite a bit of our local grid. (Global warming alarmists, take note! There are benefits to rising temperatures!) Anyway, nice that we'll have one less thing to worry about this winter.

Note the well-established grape vines at the bottom of the picture. This is the first vineyard we planted, the first spring we were here (2002). This is not the one the lambs recently decimated.

Rural multitasking

The primary enclosure for our sheep is a 2-3 acre pasture at the northern end of the property. At the southern end (separated from the pasture by a few outbuildings and other areas) is a sizable grassy meadow, in which we have planted dozens of fruit trees. Those trees are not yet mature, and are still fairly short (i.e. with lots of branches right at sheep level). We've protected them as well as possible using chicken wire enclosures, but it's far from perfect. In other words, as wonderful as that area is for grazing, we can't turn the sheep loose in there without supervision. Perhaps in a few years the trees will be tall enough, but not now.

I don't mind supervising them; I've set up a plastic chair, and enjoy having a cup of coffee in the morning as I watch them graze. If they get too close to a tree, I walk over and shoo them away. But the kids and I have discovered something even more fun for the late afternoons: they help drive the sheep down from the pasture, and then we all put on baseball mitts and toss a tennis ball around as we supervise the flock. If the sheep get too close to a tree, one of us is usually close enough to drive them away. And then it's back to playing catch.

Until it's time to drive them back north, of course. I clap my hands three times and shout "Let's GO!" The sheep have learned that this is the signal, and they usually begin stampeding back across the property. The kids have great fun chasing the stragglers, and Scooter loves getting out in front of the flock and leading the way.

This is my idea of multitasking.

More on the Magpies

The mother Magpie duck took her brood out for a stroll Sunday morning. The first two hatchlings were keeping up with her fine, but the third kept falling behind. After watching him get disoriented and lost a few times, I took him and put him in the brooder with the turkey poults. At first, they pecked at him and I was a bit concerned. But once he'd dried off, they seemed to welcome him in as one of the gang. We'll keep him there until he's mature enough to turn loose.

Meanwhile, Mama Magpie was joined by a Magpie drake (he's the one with the curly tail feathers), and the two of them have been caring for the ducklings together. He never leaves her side, and chases other birds away when they come too close. It's very sweet.

Turkey Time!

The baby turkeys (they’re called “poults” rather than “chicks”) arrived on Friday morning. As usual, we got a call from the post office at 7am alerting us that the box was waiting. Fortunately, the brooder was all set to go. I plugged in the heat lamp, then jumped in the car and ran into Loda to get the poults.

This year, we bought 15 Bourbon Reds and 10 Broad Breasted Bronze (BBB) turkeys. The Bourbon Reds are a heritage breed; they’re excellent foragers, can fly, and therefore develop a wonderful flavor and texture to their meat. These heritage birds are in high demand, and even though they’re smaller than the average supermarket turkey (12-15 pounds dressed) we completely sell out every year. The BBBs, by contrast, resemble the turkeys you usually see at the supermarket. Ours are still different, however. The supermarket birds are raised in enormous confinement buildings, and all have white feathers. Ours are raised on pasture, where they get a great variety of fresh greens in their diet --- and lots of fresh air. Not to mention bugs, and anything else they can forage. The result is an unforgettable Thanksgiving experience. As one customer remarked, “I never feel sleepy after eating one of your turkeys. Or sick the next morning.”

Anyway, turkeys tend to spend the first several weeks just thinking up ways to die. This year, surprisingly, we went all weekend without losing one. Then, predictably, I came out to find two dead and another close to death. (We always order several more than we think we’ll want to butcher.)

Here is a wider shot of our brooder:

It’s a two-level structure, which we custom-built a few years ago. We can raise up to 100 birds at a time on each level, but we haven’t been than ambitious (or crazy) for awhile. The top level is empty now, but we’ll be using it in another week or two when the baby chicks arrive. Notice the automatic, gravity-fed watering system I set up. Just out of the picture, up in the rafters of the garage, is a 40 gallon tank of water. The blue hose brings water down to the red plastic water dishes; there is a float valve inside each dish that controls the flow of water. If we had a water faucet in this building, we could’ve hooked the system up to that (with a pressure-reducing valve). I decided it was a lot easier to set it up this way, and fill that 40 gallon tank with a long hose from the house whenever necessary. Sure beats digging a trench from the house and laying pipe.

In Two Shakes of a Lamb’s Tail…

…over 100 young grape vines are decimated.

Up in the northwest corner of our property, I’ve planted what’s called the “new vineyard.” Last year, I put in about 100 young vines---which the Japanese Beetles managed to severely injure, but not kill. This spring, I planted 55 more vines; this time, I decided to try Concords. Their leaves are supposedly more resistant to Japanese Beetles, and I’m so frustrated at this point that I’m willing to try anything.

But no leaves are resistant to hungry Icelandic lambs. I’d isolated these young vines behind two sets of gates, but early Sunday morning the lambs managed to smash through one set and squeeze through the other set. By the time I came out for chores, hordes of them were working their way through my grape plantings. I chased them out, strengthened the barricades, and then began taking stock of the damage.

It was extensive, and demoralizing, but could’ve been worse. All 150 or so vines are in protective blue grow tubes that fasten to the bottom trellis line and act like a miniature greenhouse. Not all vines had cleared the top of their tube. But among those which had, nearly every one was chomped off (or at least stripped of its leaves). Naturally, the lambs left all of the delicious clover and other weeds untouched. They went straight for the most valuable cultivars.

Yes, the vines will recover, in no small part because the tubes protected them from more extensive damage. But the question is: how strong will they be when the Japanese Beetles arrive later this month? They’d really been flourishing, which had stoked my optimism about surviving the upcoming onslaught. Now…well, we’ll just have to see.

That lamb is sure going to be delicious. Just wish I had some homemade wine to enjoy it with.

Pick Up Sticks

Today was lawn-mowing day, and the kids helped me prepare by gathering up all the dead branches that had fallen from the Green Ash trees in the front yard.

As we were piling them up near the woodpile, to use for kindling next winter, Scooter was tagging along with us. With yesterday's near-tragedy clearly still on their minds, one of the kids suddenly said something really poignant:

"I'm glad we're not collecting these sticks so we can burn Scooter."

Yes, I told them, I had just been thinking the same thing.

Latest Arrivals

Remember those duck nests I posted about recently? Those ducklings are beginning to hatch. We really like these heritage breeds, like the Magpie here, that will sit on a nest and mother their own young. Her nest wasn't one of the outdoor ones I showed in the other post; she's been safely nestled in the corner of an outbuilding near the house. She has three hatchlings so far; two are poking out of her feathers, and the other is drying out underneath her. They should be off the nest and walking around the barnyard soon. Stay tuned.

03:23

When people dream about having their own farmstead, that farmstead inevitably includes a rooster. We have several, and we can't imagine not having them. Roosters are beautiful, and their interactions with each other (establishing a pecking order) are fascinating to watch. They give leadership to the flock, and keep the eggs fertile.

Like us before we moved here, people probably have a romantic image in their head of the rooster crowing to greet the sunrise. And, yes, roosters do crow to greet the sunrise. But you know what? Roosters also crow at any other time, day or night, that they jolly well please. That includes 11am, when I'm on an important conference call with a client. Or 8pm. Or 9:30am. They crow for any reason, or for no reason.

Now, picture this: the weather is hot and humid. You're sleeping with the windows open in your 120 year old farmhouse, enjoying the light breeze. It is pitch dark, hours away from sunrise. And then, at precisely 3:23am, a rooster in the nearest outbuilding begins crowing. Really loudly. Then, from another outbuilding, another rooster crows a response. Not to be outdone, the rooster in the barn with the goats lets loose. And the original rooster simply cannot let that go unanswered. And so on. And so on. Until you drag yourself out of bed, shut the windows, and wonder if you'll be getting any more sleep before it's time to get up and milk the goats.

World's Luckiest Puppy

We had a brush with disaster yesterday evening. All three kids and I were playing baseball in the front yard around 5pm, and Scooter was flopped down enjoying the shade. Suddenly, coming up our road, we heard a loud roar. We turned and took a closer look, and it was our neighbor's tractor. It's one of those mammoth John Deere machines with tires taller than the average American male, and a complete size that's larger than some starter houses. He was pulling a big mechanical cultivator, which I guessed was to weed one of his corn fields.

Scooter jumped up, and my daughter immediately realized he was going to try to chase the tractor. She grabbed him by the collar, but he was much too excited about that tractor. Scooter pulled free, scrambled across the front yard, and headed straight for the front of the tractor like a heat-seeking missile. We all were screaming at him to stop, but the roar of the tractor was much too loud. I could see our neighbor trying to slow down, but it was too late. I realized Scooter wasn't going to be able to get out of the way, and watched in horror as he rolled under the front bumper.

Around and around he rolled and dragged as the tractor passed over him, bouncing off the various pieces of implements. "No! No!" I shouted, not believing we were watching yet another of our animals die on the road.

Eventually, Scooter rolled free and jumped up. About a quart of white fluid poured out of his mouth, and I immediately remembered the internal injuries that killed Tessa just minutes after she'd jumped up and I'd thought she was going to be alright.

Scooter went running back into our yard; again my daughter tried to catch him, but again he proved too strong. My neighbor eventually got the tractor stopped, and climbed out to apologize, but I ran and assured him that it wasn't his fault. We chatted for a moment, and then I dashed off to find Scooter.

In all the confusion, no one had noticed where he went. I'd hoped my daughter could help point us in the right direction, but she had gone in the house and was in a state of complete emotional meltdown. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer went in to console Artistic Girl, and the boys and I set out to find Scooter. We eventually found him sitting behind my office building, panting and looking cowed, but otherwise unhurt. Still, I remembered Tessa's deceptively good condition, and didn't allow myself to believe we were out of the woods.

I scooped him up in my arms, and he didn't seem to be in pain. One of the boys ran to tell my wife we'd found him; I asked her to call the vet for me, and then the boys and I jumped in the van and went barreling toward Paxton with Scooter.

We got there just after the usual 5:30pm closing time, but thanks to my wife's call they were waiting for us. They checked him out, confirmed he had no injuries, and gave him an injection of anti-inflammatory and an antibiotic. "He'll be sore tomorrow," the vet told us, "but he should be okay."

Grateful, the boys and I packed up Scooter and headed for home. We stopped by the church in Paxton to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament and say "thanks" for helping Scooter survive. It's nothing short of miraculous that he missed the wheels of that tractor and the cultivator. And as he followed me around this morning as I tended animals, and as he helped me herd the sheep, I took every opportunity I had to pet him and tell him how glad I was he was still with us.