My Blog

If Google Does it, Shouldn't We?

05/21/2011 10:32:00

I was researching information on Goat Grazing and came across an interesting article in the Google Blog. Google's blog, "Mowing with Goats" is an article about how Google hires a goat grazing service to come and clean out land around their facilities. The first article was written in 2009. There is also a posting in 2010 where the goats are invited back , "goats are baaaaaahk" .

So here is a multi-million dollar company who could afford to have their pastures mowed on a regular basis, inviting about 200 goats to come clean up their pastures. Google says that is cleaner and greener this way and way more fun!

My question is, if Google does it, shouldn't we? I don't agree with most of what Google does but I do have to say in the instance they got it right!

If you would like to know more about Goat Grazing and how you can implement it in your business or how you can start a business.

Check us out at www.joyfulpromotions.com or you can Google it, lol.

Insatiable Appetites!

05/20/2011 15:08:00

Webster defines the word sate as to satisfy to the full. The definition of insatiable is that you are not able to be satisfied or satiated, you are unappeasable.

My two little babies, JarJar and Binks are the most loving, beautiful goats in the world. They are easily satisfied with love and petting. In the area of food however, these two little demons have an insatiable appetite!

When I picked them up on Monday, Michelle told me not to spoil them. Seriously? you put them in my arms, told me their mother had died, they are cuddling and looking to me for love and I was told not to spoil them? So, I had to ask her exactly what she meant.

Michelle told me that these lovely little critters would drink just as much milk as I would give them and they would want more but they were only allowed so much and it would be detrimental to them to have more. Ohhhh! Good, I can feed them sensibly and then spoil them right?

We have certainly taken our foster parenting very seriously. JarJar and Binks only get the amount of food that we can safely allow. All the hugs, ear ticklings and cuddling are just to make sure they digest it properly!

When these two are older and out in the real world that insatiability will be to our benefit. They're insatiable appetites will clear whole fields of weeds which will in turn provide really nice fertilizer to the owner of the field and a usable piece of property without the hassle of clearing it themselves.

To learn more about these wonderful creatures and how they can help you manage your property and disrupt your life, lol, check out www.joyfulpromotions.com for our seminar dates!

Now I'm Kidding!

05/20/2011 15:04:00

I am so excited! I have just been to my first kidding! Seriously!

On Monday I went to Western Nebraska to get a hands on perspective of Michelle Wendall's Happy Goats Grazing operation. Michelle winters her goats on her daughter's property and in the spring they have a couple of months of kidding.

There were mammas and babies of all shapes and colors scattered across the landscape. Michelle and her daughter had them separated according to what stage of the process they were in. Mammas and babies that were healthy and taking care of babies on their own were close to the house. Other nannies were in the trees waiting to drop their packages. A nursery was set up for orphans and a nursing school was created for mammas who had lost their babies and orphans who had lost their mammas. Babies were paired with mammas and taught how to nurse, I love how this works! Michelle's daughter Heather just has a knack for teaching.

I toured the operation, took down fence, put up fence, hitched up a water wagon, drove the old stick shift truck across the pasture to their home and even came home with a couple of kid orphans myself!!! Oh what fun they are and what fun I had! Thanks Michelle and Heather for all of the fun!

Check out tomorrows blog: Insatiable appetites!

Are You Wasting Your Weeds?

05/20/2011 15:01:00

This last Saturday was a such a beautiful Day! We had house cleaning scheduled but we had not seen the sun for so long we decided to work outside!

We were working through our various scrap piles, stacking and sorting the different projects when we realized how tall the curly dock was. My son told me that once we had the piles separated he would get the mower and cut them down. I started to agree and then remembered our newly acquired goats and how much they loved curly dock and all the other weeds on the property.

Until I get some temporary fencing that I can move around or halters and tether ropes, I am cutting the curly dock and putting it over the fence for the goats. As I was doing this last night I was thinking how happy this weed made my goats and how nothing else in the barn yard would eat it. Had I not had the goats, this weed would be wasted, I would simply cut it down and go on but now it is fattening my new stock.

Here is my thought. If you have weeds on your property but you are not interested in keeping a goat long term or through the winter you can either rent a goat(s) or buy a young goat and feed her to sell in the fall providing food for someone else. Your weeds could be contributing to the solution of feeding people in need, bringing extra money into the household, or helping a neighbor who has goats cut their feed costs all the while saving you gas and labor.

We are all aware of rising cost of gas, food and other goods. We can be creative in how we meet these problems by thinking outside our own pastures and working with and for others in America's struggle to survive this crisis.

Please check out the seminar we are hosting for Happy Goats Grazing LLC,

Michelle Wendell can give us all a "Successful Start" to our goat Journey.

Successful Start Seminars

My New, Fuel Efficient, Weedeater!

05/20/2011 14:58:00

I have to admit that when the grass starts coming up in the spring, I love to watch it grow. My farm goes from a brown and grey to a luscious green. Then the weeds start to grow and I cant keep up with them even with a good weed-eater. By the end of the summer there are places where the weeds are six foot high and unsightly.

This year I have gone green. I now have a new, fuel efficient weed-eater. Actually, I have four, Oreo, Felicity, Charcoal and UN. My four goats do not use any fuel or manpower, they do not put out to much greenhouse emissions. They do have the side benefit of fertilizing my soil. I simply put up the fence and they power through the weeds with no effort on my part.

My friend Michelle with Happy Goats Grazing LLC has the same concept but on a much larger scale. Her goats graze land for road departments and farms and ranches. The road departments do not have to use heavy equipment or harmful chemicals to clear weeds from their lands. Michelle's group just eats their way to a beautiful property and leave behind nutrients to help improve the soil. At the end of the summer she sells off part of her herd so she does not have to winter them.

Now lets take that same concept to small towns. Many times there are lots in small towns that do not get mowed either because the owners don't live in town or the property has been abandoned or any other number of reasons. A person could offer to graze those properties for a fee and make a profit on the goats at the end of the summer. In fact the city itself could do this. It would cheaper in the long run than equipment, upkeep, gas and wages. The city would definitely be labeled green for more than one reason!

So, how do you find out about this wonderful green eating machine?

Check out Michelle Wendell's Successful Start Seminar. In two days we can give you what it took us five years of trial-and-error to learn.

Check out the flyer: Successful Start Seminar

Keep in touch, next week we are kidding!

Other Tools at the Farm!

05/12/2011 19:00:00

Thats it, now I am in trouble with my other animals who have been doing a great job for several years. All of our focus has been on the goats who are the new comers to our barnyard!

Before the goats were ever thought of we had (and still have) chickens. Most people would picture a nice little chicken hutch with a fully enclosed fence around a group of chickens. Our chickens however, are free range. Not just that they range inside a pen but that they range the entire property and sometimes the neighbors.

These wonderful little livestock eat bugs, grass, weeds, ticks and they also fertilize my yard! The best prizes however are the incredible eggs. I mentioned they roamed the neighbors? The neighbors have acres of alfalfa that they(the chickens) love to pick through. The chicken’s eggs are the darkest orange I have ever seen. They must be packed full of nutrients, they certainly taste good!

So think about the eyesore weeds and the problems on your property you want to fix and make sure you have the right tools. Here are mine; For lawnmowing we have Georgia, our horse, For weedeating we have Oreo, Felicity, Charcoal and Ahab, our goats, for pest and bug control, we have many chickens, for security for us we have the dog, Brocktree and for protection of the barnyard we have our goose!

Our work has certainly been cut in half this year and our yard certainly looks better!!!

No, I am not kidding yet!

05/10/2011 09:48:00

My family and I moved to a wonderful fourteen acre property about five years ago. We had stars in our eyes when we moved the property and many things we had not thought of! I had been raised on a small farm and thought that I least had a little bit of knowledge on what we were going to face.

We have loved being here but after five years I am so tired of the endless weeds and sappling trees. If it sits still very long it will be surrounded by weeds or it will have a tree grown through it! We would have to mow and weed eat twenty four seven or constantly spray weed killer just to somewhat keep up with this stuff! A friend of mine told me that goats would eat my weeds so we started researching goats. Many raise goats for meat or for the milk. I honestly did not want the responsibility of milking twice a day. I would not mind having meat goats but was not sure what kind to get. The more I looked the more confused I got and that was just the goats. On top of that there was the fences, feeding, care and a whole slew of other things. Each time I thought of having goats, I just shelved it.

This past February I met Michelle Wendell of Happy Goats Grazing, LLC. We met at Market Place that is put on by The Center for Rural Affairs. Michelle was looking for someone to help her by hosting her new seminar and frankly I was looking for the information that she had.

My family is hosting Michelle’s Successful Start Seminar. We are so excited that we can finally have the information we need to implement one of our dreams, weed eradication! Go to www.joyfulpromotions.com

As part of our new collaboration, some of my family will be traveling to western Nebraska to take part in Happy Goats Grazing spring kidding. Seriously, we are not kidding yet, but we will be soon! We will be taking pictures of these beautiful little kids and posting them as soon as possible!

Don’t miss out on seeing these beautiful creatures, watch for my next blog.