Now That Gets My Goat!

 

Why is it that on a farm with goats, the things that really get your goat… almost always involve goats?

Seriously, anyone who doesn’t have goats probably thinks they’re all sunshine and skipping and milk commercials. Ha! Goats are like toddlers with crowbars and nothing but time. They spend every waking moment plotting how to break, eat, climb, destroy, or escape. And they’re brilliant. I’m not even convinced they’re animals. I’m pretty sure they’re small hairy engineers with hooves.

Take Saturday, for example.

It was a quiet morning, too quiet, as any seasoned farm gal will tell you. I was just about to sit down with my herb tea when the dogs went berserk. Not just the “Hey, someone’s pulling into the driveway” bark. No, this was the “INVASION! EVERYBODY PANIC!” bark. I stepped onto the deck and saw it: my garden… my beautiful, hard-won, back-breaking, sweat-drenched garden… under siege.

And there they were. The goats. The inmates had organized a full prison break!

They weren't just nibbling. Not even casually sampling. No. They were throwing a full-blown brunch. Frolicking like toddlers at a trampoline park, tails in the air, broccoli bits hanging from their lips like it was dollar margarita night at Applebee’s.

Peas? Gone. Broccoli? Gone. Cauliflower? Gone. Corn? Let’s just say it didn’t stand a chance. The blueberry bushes were untouched, but they had cleaned off every single blueberry. The only survivors were the tomatoes (which apparently didn’t pass muster), the summer squash and zucchini (miraculously unscathed), and the radishes—because, let’s face it, not even goats like radishes.

And do you think they looked even slightly guilty when I came stomping down in my barn boots like an angry landlady? Nope. They looked up at me like, “Oh hey, you’re just in time. We’re doing a tasting of your hard work.”

So, after wrangling the criminal element back into their pen (which is starting to resemble a goat version of Alcatraz), I headed to the farm store to see if they had any vegetable plants left. At this point in the season, I figured my best hope was a display of dusty seed packets and maybe a plastic carrot.

But miracle of miracles—they still had plants. Not great plants, mind you. These were the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree version of veggies. Wilted, sad, probably already questioning their will to live. But they were five bucks for a full flat. And pumpkins were free. Free! I guess everyone else had given up on pumpkins this late in the game. Not me. With the way things are going, I might need a Cinderella moment before fall.

Then came the replanting. I picked the hottest day of the summer for this, because of course I did. I was sweating like a sinner at a tent revival, dirt in places I don’t even want to talk about, and one of the goats kept hollering from across the fence like she was the victim in all this. (“Excuse me, human! We noticed you forgot to replant the kale!”)

So now we wait. The frost usually hits us right around the first week of September, which gives my new plants about… oh, three weeks to get their act together and produce something worth eating.

If we have a very warm summer…
If I fertilize like I’m prepping for the county fair…
If I can string up more fencing, add a padlock, a moat, and maybe hire a goat whisperer with a taser…
Then maybe—just maybe—we’ll end the season with a harvest instead of another episode of “Goat Gone Wild.”

Farm life. It’s not for the faint of heart—or the lovers of cauliflower.

Goats: cute enough to forgive, smart enough to resent, and just destructive enough to keep life interesting.

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