Who are we? And why goats?

Hello! We're John and Erika. We're not the Goat Busters; we're customers of theirs. We bought our seven-acre Nelson County property in March 2007—our first home!—and have been working hard ever since to fix up the house and get the garden started. And we have some long-range goals for the place: We'd love to be able to grow food on a larger scale, as in enough veggies to feed ourselves and sell some to other people, which will mean cultivating more of our land. Trouble is, most of the property is covered with the type of "edge habitat" that grows after trees have been cleared: young trees, brush, weeds and invasive species of all kinds.

Now, of course we could get some bulldozers in there, guzzle some gas, make some noise and have an acre cleared out in no time. But that's not really our style. We want to tread lightly on our land and we like sustainable solutions that solve more problems than they create. (We're into composting, cover cropping, rain collection and renewable fuels, for example.) Which is why we got interested in using goats to clear the land. They don't pollute. They fertilize as they clear. They're quieter than machinery. They don't run on fossil fuels.

And, I'm not afraid to tell you, we expect them to be extremely entertaining to boot!

We called Goat Busters as soon as we heard about them. The idea of renting goats appealed to us because we figured we could see what it's like to live with goats, under the guidance of someone who actually knows a lot about them, before committing to a herd of our own.

Company owner Jace Goodling walked our property with us and confirmed that, indeed, goats would be a good fit for us. A crew of Kiko goats would munch their way through the site we'd like to clear within several weeks, contained by an electric fence and guarded by a pair of Great Pyrennese dogs. Jace and his partner Scott would visit regularly to check on the animals, refresh the goats' water and the dogs' food, and make sure the fence is intact. All we'd have to do would be to watch and learn.

And so begins the great goat experience! Check in here for regular updates on the whole process: preparing for the goats' arrival, watching them as they do their thing, and then assessing how the site has changed once it's all done.

- Erika