Clearing Brush with Goats in the Pacific Northwest

Brush clearing is something you may deal with on a constant basis or rarely, but either way, brush clearing is always difficult and sometimes just a pain in the ass. Blackberry vines, sting-needle, and salmon-berry stocks crowd together and make it almost impossible to walk through.

Instead of using heavy machinery and expensive equipment, use organic methods to preserve the area and leave minimal impact on the environment. My favorite method of clearing real thick brush is to use goats.

Hungry hungry hip..Goats?

Goats can clear thick brush at a very fast rate and only leave behind lit nuggets of fertilizer in the form of poo pebbles. So clearing the land, also puts the nutrients back into the land instead of disturbing it. This is a natural way to clear out think brush and should be taken advantage when possible. That's the other nice part about goats, they can go anywhere!

Agile Experts

Goats are native to mountainous regions and would spend the majority of their lives of cliff sides standing next to hundred foot drops, but their amazing balance, agility and specialized footings keep them surviving. This makes goats especially useful when they area needing to be cleared is inaccessible to machinery or is too steep for workers.

Of coarse you could go the standard route of using clippers, heavy duty weed eaters, or a back hoe. Why waste the time and effort when you can simply build an fence and let nature do the work for you. 

Home Made Fence Building Decisions

I can't decide how I want to finish constructing this home made fence. At first, I was certain that I would be building a temporary fence that i would tear down at the end of summer. Looking at the diameter of the posts I used, I may be able to get much more out of it than I was originally expecting. I just can't make a decision.

Maybe my problem can be your solution, or maybe you have a solution for me? I'll go over my current options and if you have an idea, please comment below. 


Option 1

A temporary fence build out of the current posts and re-purposed decking to create a horizontal wood fence. The lumber I would be using, lets just say it's not high quality.

The benefits would obviously be expense. The posts were free, lumber from the property. And the salvaged lumber I got for free on craigslist. So I would only have to potentially spend money on nails or screws. pretty simple and cheap.



Option 2

One suggestion a family member had was to use greenhouse plastic as a "fence" because it holds in warmth. Here in the Pafic Northwest that is vitally important as our summers average around 70 - 75 degree with rare heatwaves into the 90's. So it stays pretty cool here, even in summer. 


The downside is that plastic sheets are obviously not very durable and more difficult to attach. My approach would probably be to put horizontal beams from post to post on the head and foot with spaced rips in between. The posts are currently spaced about 8 feet apart from each other, so rib posts spaced at 12 inch intervals should work well.

This is where I find this option could become somewhat expensive.

20 posts X 2 beams per post = 40 (2x4x96 inch) @ about $2.50 per

Total = $120 for 2x4 beams alone

This doesn't even include the rib posts which would roughly double this figure!

Total Cost = $240

Lucky for me I already have greenhouse plastic material? Considering the price would probably increase to about $350 at least. Now that's getting a little out of hand, but then again, over the coarse of maybe 3-5 years this option would probably pay off.



Option 3

Go for the standard wire fence that slightly expensive to purchase but easy to install and very reliable at keeping pests out. This option would costs somewhere in the range of $50 - $170 depending on quality and height. I could go for a low fence since i'm only try to keep the pooches from digging up my hard work.


These are my current options that I've been think over again and again. What do you think would work best? Do you have a similar problem? 


Leave a response below with your questions or suggestions

Fighting Nature the Easy Way

Sometimes nature can be a pain. When nature makes life difficult, make it difficult back. I'm not talking about chemicals. When growing an organic garden, chemicals should never be used.

I would love to tell you that the seeds are planted. But that's not the case quite yet. The rain has moved in and put a damper on things. Until it stops raining, I can't really get anything done. So let's go over some of the dynamics of this organic garden and why grass is a pain in the ass.

The Garden

I'm not planning a large garden. The garden is oddly shaped so almost impossible to say how large it is but I would estimate about 1000 square feet. With this space I hope to find what will grow best. So this year is essentially a test season.

I decided to go with larger rows to enable more space in between for tilling purposes. Also, with a thicker base on the row, i'm going to try and stagger seeds in a zig-zag pattern over the top of the row to increase overall yield.

Building a Fence

We have the posts for the fence in the ground already. Spent a good couple hours packing dirt into the post hole to make sure it has a tight fit. Instead of using wire fencing, I have decided to use only logs from the property as my material, just making it up as I go.

This is something i am still figuring out, hopefully i'll have a post on this soon.

Battle with Nature

Grass in the region grows thick and vigorous. Breaking up the ground becomes almost impossible without putting in some hard work hours. I believe I've solved this problem using the method you see in the picture below.

By taking some very large cardboard boxes and laying them out of the ground, you cut off the light supply and choke the plants of oxygen and ventilation. The plants slowly become weaker and weaker before they eventually would die and simply break down into the soil. 

Using this method requires very little labor and is especially effective at weakening root systems. I left these cardboard boxes out for about 4 weeks before taking it off and tilling the ground. The difference was unbelievable.

Growing an organic can sure be fun but it is also a lot of work. As you can see nature is a real pain and you will always be fighting it. So fight nature with intelligent action and your project will become much easier. Hopefully the rain will let up and I can get back to work. 

Until then, enjoy these articles:

How healthy is an Avocado?
Hamburger & Sandwich Reinvented

Growing a Small Organic Vegetable Garden : Part 1

Growing a small organic garden is a great way to spend your free time and has great payoffs, you get to grow your own food! This year i have decided grow a vegetable garden. I picked a spot, marked out some posts and got to work. It's been no easy task thus far, and I haven't even put any seeds in the ground yet! I've decided to document my progress in assuming that i will screw up eventually and someone else can learn from my mistakes. I'll be making lots of mistakes, I assure you.

What to do first...

First off, I live in the Paficic Northwest in a little area called Skagit Valley. About 45 mins north of Seattle with views of the San Juan Islands, Olympic Mountains, and Mount Baker, the Skagit valley is famous for its annual Tulip Festival and rich culture. The temperate climate and mild temperatures makes it a perfect place to grow some vegetables. We grow organic vegetables here. It's no wonder farms in Skagit Valley were recently recognized as protected farmland.


I know a garden will grow here, it's just a matter of me not screwing it up. I attempted to do some research as to what specific strains grow well in the area but i became impatient and decided to experiment and find out for myself. So i bought them all.

Getting down and dirty

I'm currently using a craftsman tiller, as you can see in the picture to the right. It's a very powerful tiller but the ground in the area is fairly rocky with some small logs so I have been going through sheer pins like crazy. It's very good soil though so it's worth the time and effort. I eventually gave up using the tiller until i could get all the roots/weeds and rock out of the dirt with shovels. Had the girlfriend out there working too, she wasn't very happy with me.

Some other tools we were using:

• Shovel
• Rake
• Pick Ax (removing rocks and stump)
• Hoe

After getting all the rocks, weeds, and a small stump out, I was able to then till up the ground a little bit more in able to create some mounded rows of dirt. Interesting things happen when your "playing" in dirt, dogs decide they want to help. After watching our three poodles digging up our hard work, I decided it was time to invest in a fence.

The nice thing about living in the country is there is material all around you. With 10 Acres of forested land, fence posts were not scarce. In all, we used a total of three, 6 inch diameter Alder trees to create the posts for the fence. 16 posts, each at about 6 feet in length. Was a lot of work, but well worth the effort. Alder is a much harder wood and is can dull a chainsaw blade quickly. Since the logs being used were small in diameter, I decided to use an ax to cut down the tree's instead of the chain saw.  OK, i'll admit it, I just like using an ax and pretending i'm a viking. You can't say you wouldn't do the same.

After digging the holes for the posts, I couldn't decide if i should fill around the posts with cement or gravel. I figured cement would help the posts last longer, but since i did not de-bark the posts i figured they were going to decay fairly quickly anyways and decided to go with gravel to pack the posts in. Less work overall so I was happy with the decision.

At this point, I have all posts in the ground with a few of the fence posts still needing to be packed in. After this is done, I will go get some fencing material and use an air compressed staple gun to attach the fence material to the posts. I'll also leave an opening for a gate. But this will be in the next segment.

I will continue working on my small organic vegetable garden. Hopefully i can post some more updates soon.

To be continued...