I Hired Goats

I hired goats 🐐 this weekend. And no, that’s not a typo. 😂 Anyone who knows me well and knows that I live in a subdivision on less than 3/4 of an acre…with a dreaded and active HOA may be 👀 right now. But it is time.

Our backyard includes a small creek area that provided hours and hours of exploration for my boys when they were young. After losing so many oak trees in Hurricane Helene, that creek area has seen more sunlight than ever before.

This was an area I was already struggling to tame each summer after the boys and their friends stopped stomping back there, which, like wildlife, seemed to keep the brush under control. I actually looked into renting goats to clear brush back in 2019, with no luck. The closest 🐐 business was in Atlanta, and they wouldn’t travel 2.5 hours away.

However, I recently learned about a goat business run by a 🇺🇸 veteran only 30 minutes away. This eco-friendly land-clearing plan was looking like a possibility.

After the construction crews wrapped up last summer and fall, I resisted causing more land disturbance with big equipment at the edges of our backyard creek area. But that was what almost every landscaper I consulted with suggested. So I waited. Wild and deeply overgrown it has become. I have tried my best to save some of the good native plants like the beautyberries and the ferns in some areas, fighting with thorny blackberries every weekend as they seem determined to choke out everything. Unfortunately, in some areas, these opportunistic invasives have grown far beyond what my small lawnmower, weed eater, and thorn gloves can tame. In fact, we can’t even see the edge of the creek anymore. The azaleas we transplanted 25 years ago during our first deck build are completely hidden in overgrown vines. The brambles and volunteer bushes are taking over an area that was once cleared ground and encroaching on what will hopefully soon be a restored fire pit area.

I admit that I’ve enjoyed having soooo much green this summer after a barren backyard for almost 2 years, but it’s time to reclaim more of our property. Since I just couldn’t stomach bringing in heavy equipment that would rip everything up, destabilize the creek edge, and probably get stuck in the mud as they worked, I hired goats.

Stay tuned for pictures in a few weeks. I’m told they’ll be fenced in well, and I’ll only have to provide water each day and some treats they’ll provide. This should be interesting, since I’m not what one would call a country girl. Anyone want to bet on whether I’ll be reported to the HOA during the 7-9 days they’ll be here?!?! Ha!

I’m really hoping the goats will make quick work of this wall of tangled, thorny mess so that we can better keep up with it and maybe even improve/beautify the edges of the creek and enjoy the meandering water sounds as the weather cools. I’m not sure I’m fully ready for so much green to disappear within a week, but here we go.

Why, you might wonder, am I sharing my backyard mess and my goat clearing plan? Well, they tie into a bigger theme that has returned to the forefront of my mind after closing the pages of one of my favorite books last week—Hannah Colter. I return to this book every year, and it never fails to make me think deeply.

Some books are like a gentle walk through a meadow. Hannah Coulter is one such book. I’ve shared my love for Wendell Berry’s writing before. This book is one of his top two, in my opinion. Sometimes I pull the book off my shelf and meander through the pages. Other years I listen to the Audible version, narrated by Susan Denaker. Her voice is calm and peaceful as she shares Hannah’s story, which is extraordinary in its ordinariness.

As a twice-widowed woman in her late seventies, Hannah shares her memories from childhood through the many changing seasons in her life. Her wise and steady voice reaches into my own life each year when I return to this novel. She refocuses my heart lens on family life, loss, marriage, community, and, maybe most importantly, the gift of bearing witness to it all—the joys and sorrows—as a woman.

This year, the quote that I keep returning to is one about place and our call to steward the place where we find ourselves. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll know this isn’t the first time I’m pondering the importance and the gift of having roots deep in a place.

“And it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it, and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven.

I think of Art Rowanberry, another one who went to the war and came home and never willingly left again, and I quote him to myself: ‘Something better! Everyone’s talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don’t matter if it ain’t nothin but a log pen.’" - Hannah Coulter, ch. 10

Hannah’s early married life was lived in the years following the Second World War. She witnessed the time when tractors and other “advances” were changing the farming life as she knew it—some for the better, and many for the worse.

Today, our desire for “something better” is fueled by what we see in our Instagram feed, or our Pinterest curation. It’s easy for discontent to creep into our hearts. But what if we began to appreciate the “place we’ve got” and began to delight in the gift of our “keeping of it”?

That’s the heart space I want to walk into this fall season with.

For me, this means returning to a regular cleaning rhythm in my home, a keeping rhythm I think I’ll call it this year. I’ll plan just a few cleaning/tending tasks each day, kind of like the “Flylady” season from many years ago. Does anyone else remember her and her “house blessing” routine?

The “keeping” of my place this fall will also include finishing the deck staining once the weather cools, adding a few more pieces of furniture to our outdoor space, planting small pops of color in the yard, and refreshing a few rooms inside with new paint.

When we first moved into this house over 30 years ago, I took a slow and collected pace to filling the rooms and adding coziness and warmth. I spent weekends meandering through antique shops, more often than not leaving empty-handed, until I found just the right furniture pieces. (We often joked that our empty front room was our theft deterrent system.) I gathered fabric at local shops and used my own sewing machine to make custom curtains, pillows, and duvet covers.

I want to return to that pace and to what feels cozy and welcoming to me in my particular home in this present season of my life, not what the latest “influencer” on social media says is “in.”

I want to open my doors to friends and family more often this fall, providing a safe shelter from the noise and frantic pace around us. I want to have a sweet treat and a cozy drink, or a glass of wine🍷 at the ready.

I’m so grateful for the home I’m blessed to call mine. I’m grateful for the life and love that has grown in this house and that has stomped through the yard. And I look forward with joyful hope to many more years of life, love, and memories just waiting to unfold here.

“Love in this world doesn’t come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place.” - Hannah Coulter, ch. 10

I’ll wrap these thoughts up with one last quote from the second-to-last chapter of Hannah Coulter. It expresses simply and beautifully what I’m only beginning to understand and embrace in this midlife season about living life openhanded. She speaks of caring for her beloved grandson who had finally come home after years away. Tending the ground around us teaches us much about tending the heart within ourselves and tending the hearts of those we love.

“I must care for him as I care for a wildflower or a singing bird, no terms, no expectations, as I finally care for Port William and the ones who have been here with me. I want to leave here openhanded, with only the ancient blessing. Good-bye. My love to you all.”

Questions to Ponder:

1. What does “place” mean to you?

2. How can you walk into the fall embracing the gift of your place and an eye to stewarding it well?

3. If you were to choose a word to describe the way you’d like to feel in the upcoming fall season, what would it be?

I’d love you to share your responses with me as we learn and grow together. Thanks for reading and thanks for being here.