Before
Most of our wooded acres are reverting pasture. Around the edges, invasive amur honeysuckle and vine honeysuckle have taken over. For the past month, we've selectively cleared much of the edges of the woods using Minnie and Sadie. Dad builds a square using four 16' cattle panels and then turns the goats loose in it. He builds a second square and then when all of the leaves have been stripped in the first, we move them to the second.
Dad surveys each square location to ensure there are no desirable saplings and then builds the square. In several cases, he has skipped a spot because of small maple or persimmon trees that would be completely stripped and possibly killed if included in the square.
Once the square is moved, we trim all lower limbs from the larger trees so that we can more easily carry buckets of sap back to the pastures. It also makes the woods more pleasing to look at and improves the quality of future firewood.
Dad is also cutting down any softwood trees that are too close to desirable hardwoods. This should improve firewood and maple sap production quite a bit.
Regardless what our goals are, the goats don't care. All they know is that it means quality browse for them and a change of scenery every three days.
After
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