Organic Weed Control
Last Saturday morning Jon and I paid a visit to our friends, Peter and Chloe. On the way there, we picked up a few pastries from Bakery Nouveau (a completely addictive French bakery located just a few blocks from our house), and I brought my camera to document Peter and Chloe’s highly effective and unusual organic weed control: goats!
Like so many gardeners in Seattle (including myself), Peter and Chloe found ivy, Himalayan blackberries, and bindweed creeping over the fence and into their yard. Rather than spend tons of time digging up the beastly plants, or using chemicals, they rented four absolutely adorable goats from the Goat Lady!
For just $25 per goat, Jill (the Goat Lady) dropped the goats off in their backyard for a week. All Peter and Chloe had to do was move the goats around the yard (they are tether-trained) and check on them a few times a day. The goats ate weeds to their hearts’ content, and they also left tons of free fertilizer in their wake!
I particularly liked two of the goats, Sunny, who loved being petted, and Twitch, a small goat with a very sweet face.
Sunny is a real lover…her heart shaped spot proves it!







Oh man, they are so cute! It makes me wish I had a yard full of weeds so that I could rent them.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:11 pm[...] Willi talks about how to keep weeds at bay – hire goats! [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 6:53 pmLove this idea! I’ve been breaking my back the past couple of dry days….this is definitely an option for us!
June 17th, 2008 at 8:09 pmI wish I was the goat lady! I wonder if pygmy goats would do the same work?
October 27th, 2009 at 2:40 pm[...] perfect subject for the May desktop calendar because it is weed season. My friends Peter and Chloe rented goats to tidy up their overgrown backyard a few years ago and I saw for myself that goats love to nosh on [...]
May 1st, 2011 at 10:59 pmJust went to the Goat Lady website. Apparently, a few bad apples ruined it for the rest of us – and she will no longer rent a few goats for a week anymore. Very, very sad – and now am looking at digging up ivy, dandelions, and blackberry plants (luckily, they’re not bushes yet).
June 10th, 2011 at 8:20 pm