I love this hack. My mom had a small herd of pygmie goats for her Montessori preschool. Some guy she knew convinced her to rent them out for this kind of job.
It wasn't the money that convinced her (don't think those little guys were the best earners) but the idea that "we could send in dudes with poison sprayers and loud gas power mowers, or we could just send Billy and his friends in to quietly munch on it for a few hours/days".
So many more eco points for doing it with the goats. Plus goats are intelligent and an interesting population to have suddenly show up and take over a spot. If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the goats was good for the kids. While being chauffeured to various feasts kept the goats in high spirits.
Even the obvious down side isn't that bad -- goat shit comes out in these clean little dry pellets; much better than dog shit or cow shit or bird shit or a San Francisco sidewalk.
> If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the goats was good for the kids.
I read this sentence three times before finally deciding that you were using "kid" to refer to human children and not young goats. It's true either way.
Another advantage which isn't mentioned: the goats (or similar grazing species) are also walking manure factories (really, compared to a compost heap they are machines), so pretty effective at spreading fertilizer all over the place. Automatically and for free :P
They perfectly fit in the self-sufficiency style - especially compared to the alternative worst-case senario: you don't need to get your polluting vehicle and drive to a store to pay money for some chemicals, then drive back and use some other polluting machine to get the checmical crap where it has to do whatever it does. Oh yeah, and repeat every year and be left with unhealthy soil. Which can probably be countered with more chemicals, yay!
When my coworkers see news like this they start telling me that I ought to bring my fleet of Nubian goats out on jobs like this. They do great work, easily digesting poison ivy (and destroying its seeds so it can't regrow from their droppings).
Goats are a big component of a project I'm working on now, where they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and tilling the land with their hooves in the process.
In a small farming operation where the negatives to using many chemicals (to fertilize crops, and to kill weeds) isn't even always safety or environmental, but simply cost-related: the work that grazing animals like goats can provide is a game-changer. Plus, they are super fun animals to be around. I used to think that having a few backyard chickens for eggs would always be a no-brainer decision, but now I am sure that I'll always keep a couple goats around too.
they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and tilling the land with their hooves in the process
Almost literally as it's described by John Seymour! Ok he talks about pigs, but there's not that much difference - quote: To say nothing of the fact that pigs are the finest free cultivators that were ever invented! They will clear your land, and plough it, and dung it, and harrow it, and leave it nearly ready for you to put your seed in, with no more labour to you than the occasional shifting of an electric fence
I've got my hands full with my current flock, but I would love to have pigs for this reason (among others). Would be great to have them root around in some scrub land as Seymour describes, then use its new fertility to grow grains to feed myself and the goats, continuing the cycle! Just not enough time in the day :)
Yeah I know the feeling, never enough time. Maintaining land+flock really seems to be a full time job.
But pigs are awesome, very intelligent as well. We have some kunekune pigs and while they don't prepare the land as described above, they do happily eat grass and various kinds of plants the entire day and usually drop their dung in a couple of confined places so it's relatively easy to collect and use elsewhere. But I admit the main reason we have them is they are super adorable, cute, friendly, funny, play well together with goats, loved by children, don't require much looking after, you name it. Highly recommened :P
What do you do for a living that involves strategizing around a 'fleet' of goats? Do you lease them out to a client or are you some kind of environmental planner?
I've made jokes about getting a goat so I don't have to mow the lawn anymore, but you've clearly taken it to the next level.
My partner and I run a small diversified farm. The goats are part of a small dairy for our personal consumption (dang restrictive raw dairy laws) as well as contributing to our production of goats' milk soap. Plus they make great fertilizer, which is really important for our field didn't have great nutrient content when we started.
I usually don't look at profiles on HN, but seems when I do it's worth it. Visited your website and I'm impressed and really love what you are doing there. I truly believe if more people would go back (or in my view, forward) to such lifestyle or similar the world would be a better place in general. Me and my wife have been tinkering with ideas like this for a couple of years now but really didn't have the time to start (still rebuilding the house which came with the land). Seeing things like this definitely works as extra motivation.
When Amazon Japan used goats as lawnmowers [1], proper procedure had to be maintained:
"The company has officially hired the goats following a procedure similar to the one used when hiring humans: it made identity cards for goats, just as it did for its human employees."
I was wondering about that too, hopefully nothing like the wild pigs that plague Texas will happen with the goats. We might just have to bring in tigers or something like that to control the goats later on...
I have always wondered why western nations do not consume goat meat. One of my christian friends mentioned is that ii is because of hooves and devil symbolism; is there any merit to this argument ? I understand Hindus don't eat beef because of religious reasons and muslims don't eat pork also because of religious reasons. This is a comparison of nutritional value of goat vs. beef vs pork. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=goat+meat+vs.+beef+vs.+... . Bon Apetit!
That religious thing is a rarity. People don't eat goat because its not really available. I, american, find it delicious but have only ever had it in indian restaurants.
At this point in time, the cultural issues around eating goat meat in the west are probably less of a factor and it has more to do with logistics and regulation.
The supply chains around industrial factory farming for poultry, beef, and pork are very mature. They've also engaged in regulatory capture for nearly half a century. Many laws and regulations exist which would lock out new sources of meat to the average American consumer.
Goat milk and cheese, are becoming more popular, however. So there is a ready supply of livestock. So things could easily change.
As for the pork thing, it is not just muslims. Strictly speaking christians should not touch it either as it is part of the old testament.
My personal take on this is that back then someone observed that people that ate pork often ended up sick and died.
While we now know that is is because of an illness passed from pig to human, back then it may well have been interpreted as divine punishment.
But then those days religion and law was one and the same, and so the declaration of pork as unclean may well be seen as a health and safety regulation.
Supposedly you can find passages from nearby cultures that line up very well with the old testament, with one crucial difference. While other cultures makes violations an offense against society, the bible makes them an offense against god. Meaning that what others deemed a social or secular matter, suddenly became religious.
It is for cultural and geographic reasons. Goats work really well in arid regions because they survive on brush. But cows and sheep are much more productive in grass areas.
So Northern europeans didn't really heavily use domesticated goats. The Spanish and Portuguese brought them to Latin America. But American culture developed in areas settled by English and fueled by Northern European immigration.
I believe it to be cultural and economical. Beef, pork, and chicken are well-established as easy to mass-produce on a large scale, with outlets for all the "extra bits" (hot dogs, Chicken McNuggets, etc) which would cut into the producer's bottom line and make a cut of goat meat seem more expensive than the equivalent pork chop.
Secondly, these aren't necessarily "acceptable" meats. Much like rabbits, which I raise for meat occasionally, eyebrows get raised and judgements get passed. Perhaps producers and consumers both find it easiest to stick with what's deemed acceptable and common, easy to homogenize and turn into processed food.
Goats are especially vulnerable to hoof rot / foot scald and foot abscesses when they're spending lots of time on soils / ground that are wet or moist in places like Wales which is why they're heavily medicated. Climates like India with significant dry/arid periods are probably the climates that goats evolved in.
> “It’s not a flavor issue; it’s the word more than anything else,” he says. Perhaps calling it “Caribbean lamb” would increase sales.
> Fairbanks guesses most folks simply have no experience with eating goat – or perhaps have had an unpleasant one eating curry cooked with older goat, which might have a gamey taste or tough texture.
> Another hurdle for goat meat: Consumers don’t see it on menus.
It's hard to say it's a Christian thing.
Note that this isn't a new thing either. "Consumer Attitudes and Handling Practices of Retailers for Lamb, Mutton and Goat", Feb. 1959 has several things to say about it, mostly concluding it's a lack of experience. It has more to say about lamb/mutton than sheep.
> Military officials attribute the dislike of military personnel for lamb to the fact that many troops spent several months or years in England and other heavy lamb and mutton-eating countries during World War II. The reasoning is that they were given so much lamb and mutton that many of them developed a psychological dislike for it.
Lamb and mutton are traditional staples in Europe, as well as goat and kid to a lesser degree. In the US, there was plentiful land for grazing cattle, and beef was considered more prestigious than mutton in England, so that's what they settlers focused on. At this point the flavor of lamb [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexanoic_acid etc.] is considered unpalatable by many in the US and most recipes are designed to minimize gaminess. Supermarkets like Safeway usually have no goat meat but small amounts of lamb. I think that has more to do with it than any demonic symbolism.
TIL phragmites is an invasive species. An incredibly fun and useful plant, right up there with day lily (also invasive and hardy). Kudzu is beautiful but incredibly destructive.
36 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 90.2 ms ] threadIt wasn't the money that convinced her (don't think those little guys were the best earners) but the idea that "we could send in dudes with poison sprayers and loud gas power mowers, or we could just send Billy and his friends in to quietly munch on it for a few hours/days".
So many more eco points for doing it with the goats. Plus goats are intelligent and an interesting population to have suddenly show up and take over a spot. If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the goats was good for the kids. While being chauffeured to various feasts kept the goats in high spirits.
Even the obvious down side isn't that bad -- goat shit comes out in these clean little dry pellets; much better than dog shit or cow shit or bird shit or a San Francisco sidewalk.
I read this sentence three times before finally deciding that you were using "kid" to refer to human children and not young goats. It's true either way.
They perfectly fit in the self-sufficiency style - especially compared to the alternative worst-case senario: you don't need to get your polluting vehicle and drive to a store to pay money for some chemicals, then drive back and use some other polluting machine to get the checmical crap where it has to do whatever it does. Oh yeah, and repeat every year and be left with unhealthy soil. Which can probably be countered with more chemicals, yay!
Tallahassee started using sheep in 1999 for kudzu. Unfortunately, people stole 10 of the sheep in 2001 (http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/072701/met_6795173... ) and another 21 in 2003 (http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20031004/NEWS/310040550 ).
I can't find mention of Tallahassee still using animals for kudzu control.
Goats are a big component of a project I'm working on now, where they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and tilling the land with their hooves in the process.
In a small farming operation where the negatives to using many chemicals (to fertilize crops, and to kill weeds) isn't even always safety or environmental, but simply cost-related: the work that grazing animals like goats can provide is a game-changer. Plus, they are super fun animals to be around. I used to think that having a few backyard chickens for eggs would always be a no-brainer decision, but now I am sure that I'll always keep a couple goats around too.
Almost literally as it's described by John Seymour! Ok he talks about pigs, but there's not that much difference - quote: To say nothing of the fact that pigs are the finest free cultivators that were ever invented! They will clear your land, and plough it, and dung it, and harrow it, and leave it nearly ready for you to put your seed in, with no more labour to you than the occasional shifting of an electric fence
I've made jokes about getting a goat so I don't have to mow the lawn anymore, but you've clearly taken it to the next level.
"The company has officially hired the goats following a procedure similar to the one used when hiring humans: it made identity cards for goats, just as it did for its human employees."
[1] http://www.tokyotimes.com/amazon-japan-hires-goats-to-mow-gr...
The supply chains around industrial factory farming for poultry, beef, and pork are very mature. They've also engaged in regulatory capture for nearly half a century. Many laws and regulations exist which would lock out new sources of meat to the average American consumer.
Goat milk and cheese, are becoming more popular, however. So there is a ready supply of livestock. So things could easily change.
As for the pork thing, it is not just muslims. Strictly speaking christians should not touch it either as it is part of the old testament.
My personal take on this is that back then someone observed that people that ate pork often ended up sick and died.
While we now know that is is because of an illness passed from pig to human, back then it may well have been interpreted as divine punishment.
But then those days religion and law was one and the same, and so the declaration of pork as unclean may well be seen as a health and safety regulation.
Supposedly you can find passages from nearby cultures that line up very well with the old testament, with one crucial difference. While other cultures makes violations an offense against society, the bible makes them an offense against god. Meaning that what others deemed a social or secular matter, suddenly became religious.
So Northern europeans didn't really heavily use domesticated goats. The Spanish and Portuguese brought them to Latin America. But American culture developed in areas settled by English and fueled by Northern European immigration.
Here it's often prepared simply with spices over a grill, and it's delicious. I'm going to miss this when I go back to Europe.
There's quite a number of high-end restaurants that specialize in this delicious meat.
I would say hispanics as a whole are much more open about eating goat or sheep. Americans seem to prefer cow, and lean pork.
Or maybe it's the idea that a rack of delicious lamb chops is more expensive that the equivalent beef steak?
Secondly, these aren't necessarily "acceptable" meats. Much like rabbits, which I raise for meat occasionally, eyebrows get raised and judgements get passed. Perhaps producers and consumers both find it easiest to stick with what's deemed acceptable and common, easy to homogenize and turn into processed food.
Among those who know better.. goat, yum.
Why don't Americans eat much goat? According to http://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/goat-left-behind/ :
> “It’s not a flavor issue; it’s the word more than anything else,” he says. Perhaps calling it “Caribbean lamb” would increase sales.
> Fairbanks guesses most folks simply have no experience with eating goat – or perhaps have had an unpleasant one eating curry cooked with older goat, which might have a gamey taste or tough texture.
> Another hurdle for goat meat: Consumers don’t see it on menus.
It's hard to say it's a Christian thing.
Note that this isn't a new thing either. "Consumer Attitudes and Handling Practices of Retailers for Lamb, Mutton and Goat", Feb. 1959 has several things to say about it, mostly concluding it's a lack of experience. It has more to say about lamb/mutton than sheep.
One of the curious observations is that military family consumption was very low compared to the average American family. Quoting from http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=txa.tarb087001;view=1u... :
> Military officials attribute the dislike of military personnel for lamb to the fact that many troops spent several months or years in England and other heavy lamb and mutton-eating countries during World War II. The reasoning is that they were given so much lamb and mutton that many of them developed a psychological dislike for it.