Lake County Goats.

More goats.  Not the fat and happy, valley-floor-living Napa goats I photographed this past April. No, these poor goats had the misfortune to find themselves in the midst of one of the most destructive wildfires in the history of California. I copied this photograph from the Facebook page of one of my co-workers, the Balancing Queen (BQ), who unfortunately lost her home and all of her possessions, and most likely her cats, in the Valley Fire which is currently burning to the north of here in Lake County. And tragically, the BQ is not alone in her predicament, at last count some 600 homes have been destroyed.
Wineries and vineyards have been lost.  Many vineyards, although not directly affected by the fire, remain unpicked as access to them is restricted.  Regretfully, wildfires, earthquakes and drought are all apart of life in California. The goats survived.
Photo credit: JoAnn Saccato

Napa Goats.

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.