Goatscaping

We were out of town for a bit, visiting our daughter who's studying in France this semester. I'll have some pictures, and thoughts on French gardens, soon.

Right before we left for our trip, we had some landscaping done. Our back woods were terribly overgrown with brambles, English ivy, and holly bushes. We would go out each spring, pull ivy for a few hours, fill up the yard waste cart, get discouraged by our lack of progress, go back inside and give up for the year. Pathetic. This year we decided to take decisive action, before the ivy completely took over. We hired Piedmont Goatscapers and their crew of goats to come in and clean up the place.

On the first day, the human crew came out to mark the young trees and plants we wanted to save. They set up a moveable pen with a solar powered electric fence. The next day, they brought the goats, and the goats went to work. The whole thing took about three days.

The most exciting part was what my neighbors called The Running of the Goats. At the end of each day, the shepherds herded the goats back to the trailer down a long chute that ran from the pen in the woods, along the edge of the woods, across the yard, to the street, where the goats were loaded on to the trailer to go home each night. The second day they were here, they caused a traffic jam, as people driving by stopped their cars to jump out and take a look and even to take pictures!

The woods look terrific now! They uncovered some native trillium growing back there, and the redbuds and dogwoods really stand out.