Our church sponsors an annual "Community Leaf Raking Day," helping elderly or disabled neighbors with the autumn yardwork. I contemplated having us participate as a family this year but just wasn't sure how the goats would behave...so I sent Mike off with a van full of youth rakers while I stayed home with Em and Ellie. I figured they could help me rake our own yard - a beautiful sunny day ideal for outdoor mother-goat bonding time. As crunchy dried leaves are one of their most favorite snacks, they've been doing their best to graze the yard clean, but there was still a few leaves left for me to gather.
Here's what I learned. Raking leaves with goats is a bit like raking leaves with toddlers. It sounds like a fun idea in the beginning. Both enjoy jumping in the great piles of leaves (undoing all your hard work), and both will constantly pester you for snacks and attention, slightly peeved that you are showing more interest in a wooden-handled tool than in playing with them. Also, there will be frequent bathroom breaks.
If you have a choice in leaf-raking companions, stick with small children. Although they will still bolt for freedom every time you try to drag a heavy tarp through the open gate, escaped toddlers are slower and much easier to catch than runaway goats. In addition, children eat plastic tarps rarely, and rakes, never. (The same cannot be said for goats, who eat nothing you want them to and everything you don't.)
I wonder if you can teach goats to shovel snow...
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