I promise to write about something other than goats within the next week....or so.  Would you believe me if I said this post is about cover crops and fences?

Way back when we started making chicken pastures, we built our fences out of chicken wire.  The theory was simple --- chicken wire's cheap, and that's all we could afford.  Now, many of those fences are nearly lost beneath impenetrable hedges of Japanese honeysuckle...which happens to be a plant that goats adore.  The question became --- although a chicken-wire fence obviously isn't going to keep in a determined goat long term, would it be sufficient for goat retention until the honeysuckle was gone?

Within half an hour, I learned that the answer was no.  Perhaps if the only goats involved were little shrimps like Artemisia, my experiment would have worked, but the fence bowed down under Abigail's hooves, and soon our doe decided that the honeysuckle was greener on the other side of the fence.  Luckily, I was sitting on the porch watching at the time because the result was a scary race around the yard, Lucy having decided that anything running should be chased and Abigail having decided that if she was being chased she would have to keep running.  Once Mark came out and collared Lucy, though, peace descended immediately --- Abigail came right to me and so did Artemisia, and soon they were both safely behind cattle panels (although on less exciting browse).  At least now I know that worry number two isn't a concern --- a loose goat isn't going to disappear into the woods, not if she knows I dole out dried sweet corn every day or two.

The other thing I've been learning this weekend is goat dietary preferences.  In addition to honeysuckle, Abigail adores oat leaves, red clover, plantain, and broccoli leaves.  She's also quite fond of the tops of oilseed radishes, but is totally uninterested in the roots, suggesting that I can put this cover crop to dual duty, feeding our herd and the soil with the same planting.  In fact, I suspect, I can do something similar with oats since Abigail tends to browse the plants high enough that they should regrow as well.

What about Artemisia?  She eats whatever's close to Abigail, since our little doeling is much more interested in being sociable than in being fed.  Luckily, her pint-sized rumen fills up fast, and she always seems fat and happy when I run my hands over her little round body.  It's extremely satisfying to watch our goats grow on weeds alone.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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