Kevin A. Roberts
Clad in pants, wellies, and a plaid shirt damp with sweat, Erika Streeter stakes a fence (not yet electrified) around the hilly tangle of honeysuckle, kudzu, and poison ivy at the back of the Ashers’ deep lot. In a nearby trailer, 26 Kiko goats wait to forage—and thereby clear a mess that’s resisted human intervention.
“They’ll really eat poison ivy?” I ask.
“Oh, that’s their happy place,” Streeter says. The males in her herd are in Ladue today for a job that’s entirely poison ivy removal; it crept into the owner’s English ivy, and she is both allergic and organic.
Streeter runs this Goats on the Go franchise with her son, Willem Smith, who, she warns me, “speaks dry, fluent sarcasm.” Though he feigns reluctance, Smith has been learning fast. A polo player, he was already easy with the horses stabled at the family’s Wildwood farm, and they’ve had pet goats for years. But those are “lap babies,” he explains, pulling up a photo of a chubby short-legged dairy goat named Rosebud.
This is a more pragmatic partnership.
“See, I thought letting this go would be the answer,” sighs today’s client, Cathy Asher. “I didn’t know about honeysuckle.” She wanted this ranch house in St. Peters before she ever saw the interior, simply because she’d fallen in love with all the towering shade trees. Plus there was a woodsy hollow at the back of the deep lot that screened away the neighbors and would make a lovely vista…or, at least, it would if it hadn’t gone so wild.
Last summer, Asher recalls with a grimace, she and her husband tried (and failed) to remove it themselves. Trundling in heavier equipment could have hurt her beloved trees and would have left all sorts of debris to haul out. When her husband learned about landscaper goats, Asher found Goats to Go.
“We can do about an acre a week of clearing,” Streeter says. “They defoliate a plant, like, 95 percent, from 6 to 8 feet down, which weakens and stresses it. In some cases, if you want a full elimination, you have to do three grazings. This should only take one.”
Giggling, Asher pulls up a lawn chair to watch her new crew work: “We have grandkids coming in from Nevada, and my son’s coming over. This is going to be a party!”
“Any minute now, somebody’s going to glance out a window and see 26 goats.”
“We’ll leave them here for a week,” Streeter tells her, “and we’ll bring some of our lap babies with us for your grandkids to pet.”
When the fence is secure enough to foil escape artists, Streeter gives a signal, and Smith opens the trailer. Goats gallop out, and the river of chestnut, black, tan, and cream flows into the jungle of green.
“We have goats!” Asher cheers, reaching for her phone to take pictures. They start scarfing, the adults nipping off the tops of tall weeds and the little ones gobbling up ground cover. As soon as they trade mother’s milk for solids, the kids are ready to forage, so this is a job the whole family can do together.
The neighbor’s 5- and 7-year-old boys rush over to see what’s going on. After warning them about the fence, Streeter explains that it’s to protect the goats, too. “I don’t mind if humans get inside—unless they’re drunk and rowdy,” she murmurs to me, “but this’ll keep out a coyote or a mean dog.”
“Other than wanting cuddles, how are your lap babies different from these guys?” I ask.
“Work ethic,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Mine expect me to bring them rich alfalfa.”
The yard crew doesn’t need such service; they count on the forage—most of which is 18 percent protein, about the same as the finest feed. The lap babies have a little pallet swing and a seesaw, but these guys make their own playground, climbing on logs and piggybacking on one another’s shoulders.
The Ashers don’t know their neighbors in back, across the weed-clotted ravine, so any minute now, somebody’s going to glance out a window and see 26 goats they weren’t expecting. Except…you can’t see them anymore. They’re so deep into the thick foliage, they’ve dropped out of sight altogether.
In the heat of the day, they’ll probably nap, Streeter notes. She’s had clients who were alarmed to see progress come to a halt, but just like human ground crews, “they do take breaks. And they have to ruminate.”
Asher nods absently; she’s just tickled to have them here. Streeter ceremoniously hands her a grain bucket. “This is for emergency purposes. If for some reason there was a breach, you could give this a shake; it’s a great motivator.” Seeing Asher’s eyes widen, she adds quickly, “I’ll be on my way. It’s not on you. But since you’re the first responder…”
It’s only when the goats are satiated that mischief might start, she adds. “If we read their behavior, they will tell us when they’re done here.”
The next client lives on a bluff that would thwart equipment, vehicles, and humans alike. The goats will nimbly descend that bluff, so light-footed they won’t add to erosion, and the only yard waste they’ll leave behind is a bit of fertilizer. Like Asher, this client’s delighted at the prospect—it’s pricey but, compared to alternatives, starts to look like a bargain—and it’s just plain fun. He, too, is inviting friends to party with the tame goats.
No more ragweed, honeysuckle, poison ivy, mulberry, kudzu, thistle, or vetch; no lumbering machines; no more toxic chemicals. Everybody wins.
Nature’s always been good at symbiosis. Now, we’re learning.
