Eat This, Not That...

Recently a friend asked if she could borrow a goat for a day - she wanted to have all the weeds and brush cleared from her yard. Yeah, right! I told her she was welcome to "borrow" both goats (one would be too lonely) for as long as it took. However, I really didn't want to lose a good friendship, so I had to be honest and confess that it is unlikely the goat boys would eat any weeds at all. Valuable shrubbery, freshly-planted annuals, tomato plants - absolutely. Clothing from the washline - no question. Entire shoelaces from your new pair of sneakers - in a minute. Tenacious weeds taking over your yard - not even if they were served on a platter! What they mostly love are dried-up dead leaves, but these are hard to come by in the summer...

I suppose some goats do eat "anything" -  but certainly not Emerson and Elliot. There are actually only two kinds of weeds on our property that they like. One is a leafy thing with purplish flowers, abundant and easy to pick (of course it doesn't grow in their area, so we pick bunches from the field each morning). I'm still trying to figure out their schedule, as some days they completely ignore this treat, while other days they nibble away...I think it might have to do with odd/even days or phases of the moon. But we keep trying. The one weed they adore, however, is a thick-stemmed prickly item that grows some four feet tall; this requires gloves and garden shears to "harvest" from the bank below our driveway. The goats eagerly devour the foliage, leaving us a pile of long, spiky stems to dispose of. Again, this unfortunately does not grow in the yard where the goats live, although Emily and I have discussed transplanting a patch of it along the side of the house. Once the lilac bushes are all eaten, there will be a perfect spot...A few nights ago we almost had a tragedy involving my husband and the gas-powered weedwacker. Apparently he hadn't noticed the goats' penchant for these unsightly plants, and was starting to cut them down!! Fortunately Emily is a fast runner and dashed outside to intervene, yelling "No, Dad! Not the special weeds!"

It is probably a good thing we have no close neighbors.

Yesterday at a yard sale we absolutely hit the jackpot. The sale was in an upscale neighborhood a few miles away, a development with spacious homes, perfect lawns, long driveways lined with mature trees...We found a few good books and a cute t-shirt, not a bad haul for a dollar. Walking back up the driveway, Emily and I both saw it at the same time - there, in the front yard under a majestic oak tree, a huge branch covered with dead leaves, obviously blown down in a recent storm. We were both thinking the same thing - this would keep the goats busy for hours! Emily said, "Mom, should I go ask her?" I looked back - the lady of the house was busy making change for another customer. Really, we would be doing her a favor - what use would this family have for a dead oak branch...unless they too had backyard goats...and I was pretty sure the zoning wouldn't allow that here. It was not a hard decision. "Quick, Emily, you drag the branch while I unlock the van..." You just never know what treasures you'll snag at a yard sale!