A neighbour has decided to plant vines in two former horse paddocks in front of her house. The two plots had been ripped with a bulldozer last autumn and since then they have been left, over winter, to the machinations of the weeds. The wild oats, barley, mustard and wild radish were shoulder high this time last week, but that was before the goats arrived - about 50 of them. The weeds are now stubble.
Napa Goats is a business that rents out domestic goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) to folks in need of vegetation control. I want to hire the goats to nibble away at the Himalayan blackberries (Rubus armeniacus) that are threatening to take over Vinoland. I swear, along with cockroaches and Twinkies, blackberry plants would survive a nuclear apocalypse. I need those goats. However, Vinomaker is worried that the goats would escape into the vineyard. But I'm thinking that if I did hire the goats and they somehow got loose in the vineyard Vinodog 2, with her Border Collie blood, would, at long last, be gainfully employed like the Napa Goats.
9 comments:
Wow! So much fun here: the very neat picture, the twinkies, and vinodog 2' instincts all nicely wrapped up in one short story.
The word-smith fashions from a paddock some not-so wild oats!
Good job all the way around. :-)
monkey and I are considering a couple for the pond woods here.
Renting out goats; a great idea. Wish someone around here would do it.
NHW: Thanks, but the goats are the stars of this short story. And they're so much fun to watch.
Thud: Yes, they'd clear out all those rhododendrons in the blink of an eye (hopefully you don't have the poisonous type of rhododendrons, though).
Tomasso: A new business opportunity for you? Although I hear they aren't very cold hardy.
...neither am I cold hardy, but I survive--barely.
Incidentally, goats are cool. They are the clowns of the animal kingdom. You should see fifteen of them pile into a Volkswagen!
Tomasso: I am finding the Napa Goats very amusing, including the two newborns that arrived on Sunday.
Goats are cool. But it's not wise to unleash an untrained herding dog on livestock that is not familiar with dogs--best to herd them yourself with a noisy tin can full of nuts and bolts.
Laura: Welcome to Vinsanity.
Don't worry, Vinodog 2 is afraid of her own shadow. I guarantee you that she would run as fast as she could away from those goats if there was even the slightest chance that the fence between them disappeared.
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