I, Nessie, was promoted to senior border collie for this last trip of another busy grazing season. Craig and I are still out with the goats on a project near the SeaTac airport.
For most of September the goats were out working while the rest of us were at home. The goats were about an hour away from our ranch working for the town of Fairfield and then for a landowner south of Spokane. Craig checked on the goats every three to four days. Most of the goats stayed in the pen but there was one escape artist who thought the feed was better on the outside of the pen. Lucky for him the coyotes did not find him.
The project was to reduce the amount of vegetation on the site so it would not be as big of a fire hazard. The goats did a good job on most of the vegetation. The site had not been grazed for years so there was a lot of old dry plant material from previous years that the goats did not like. They did trample some of that material onto the ground so that it will break down better over the next year.
Craig worked hard in early October to get the barn cleaned out and the hay in the barn for the winter. Craig with the help of our neighbor Colton put over 40 tons of hay into the barn. He wanted to have all the hay in the barn before he left for the last project of the season. Craig did not want to be hauling hay in November. There is always a chance for snow and it is no fun hauling hay when the roads are slick.
On the current project the goats are working on blackberries and English ivy. Some of the blackberries are old growth, dense thickets that are over 10 feet tall. Craig has to use the hedge trimmer and the horse panels to get the goats into the thickets. It is hard work to open up these dense stands of blackberries. Craig is glad that only about half of the 13 acres is old growth. The first 10 days of the project have been quite nice. The last 3 have been quite wet. I will talk about that in the next post.
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