zurcian braun

So So So COOOL!! Thanks for sharing

This is a great link, thanks!

Or are they their own species? They're small (often a half an inch), but they do eat a lot.

Thank you all so much for your responses. This is super helpful and encouraging:) Rudyard, your response is full of such good info!! Thank you!!!

I'm wondering if folks have opinions as to whether it's better to train your goats to follow you when you're herding them to graze versus pushing them.

I have experience shepherding flocks of 30 to 50 sheep and goats but it was in open country and there weren’t really any neighbors gardens or busy roads to worry about. Here in the northern cascades we’re planning on having just a few milking goats and would like to take them out at least a couple times a week on long grazing walks through the forest where we live in addition to keeping them in mobile fenced areas.  It’s way way more densely forested here so we could potentially lose track of them more easily and we do have some nearby neighbors and roads to consider. Also in my experience it’s way harder to herd just a few goats/sheep by pushing them rather than a large flock. Less surface area to work with 😅 So I’ve been thinking about training them to follow.

I know that animals personalities can differ greatly but I'm wondering if folks have experience where after training their goats to follow, you can pretty much just walk through the forest and have your goats stick pretty close to you while grazing. Or is that too much to ask of your animal friends.

Thanks so much for reading!

Ed, thanks for the thoughtful response and for sharing your experience and take on things. Very appreciated. Also, I checked out the thread link you included and followed it to this one: plant poisonous plants (basically an extended version of the thread that you shared). And great tip on keeping goats from girdling trees!!

I think viable is in the eye of the beholder. Put differently, it's all in the maple sap that floats your pancake boat!

Having a local sugar is pretty amazing (one that isn't fruit-based.. I make apple syrup too). We certainly have enough wood around here to cook it down. But I think what I'm most excited to tell folks about is that you don't need to cook it at all! You can drink as is, Brew your tea, carbonate, squeeze in some "citrus" (eg sumac), whatever. If you like it a little sweeter, reduce it a touch first. Make a bag of maple ice cubes for special drinks or even pressure can it (yes takes extra energy).

But also yes, people are successfully profiting off of it: Neil

I've made some very delicious big leaf maple syrup since my original post and don't feel like the ratio is a big deal for me personally. I'm used to tapping red and norway maple which are both around 60 to 1 and birch which is even less. The thing that I'm still having a hard time with is timing. When it flows here seems to be so random, and by the time conditions are pretty good, your holes have begun to heal and you don't get flow! So you have to continually tap through the season and really catch they flows at the right time. Especially because the flow may only last a few days (in my area at least). I'm into the challenge though. Being tapped into my environment and such ;)

Any Cascadian sheep/goatherds here?

We're in the process of getting some milking goats and we would really like to herd them in surrounding forests (using traditional herding methods as well as the use of temporary mobile fencing).

My big question is related to toxic plants that we find in our forests. It seems that everywhere I look there's something toxic for goats to eat. Carpets of pacific bleeding heart, huge patches of osoberry and bracken fern, elder everywhere, and buttercup anywhere there's anything resembling a meadow. Sometimes I look around and ask myself, "what can they eat??"

Of course there's lots of good forage in the forest and half of the job of herding is bringing your flock to the good stuff. But it does seem pretty unavoidable that sheep and goats here will be consistently exposed to toxic plants. Everyone says as long as they have good stuff available to them, your goats will mostly avoid the toxic plants. But do the people saying this have the tantalizing array of toxic plants that we do here in the PNW??

Am I supposed to just be the parent who does their best to provide good options to their kids and hope they make good choices? Anyone have relevant experience to share?

Thanks!

The corn that we have here tops out at around 4.5 ft. I'd like to grow pole beans up the corn stalks but wondering how that will work out once the beans reach the tops of the corn stalks. Just from observing other climbing bean plants, they get super tall and then start to lean in any direction to find the next thing to grow on, sometimes linking the multiple things that they're growing on creating a big ol' bean plant mass. Great for trellises, not sure how it will work out on something as short and bendible as our corn plants.

Any thoughts?

Are there pole bean varieties that don't get that tall?? Not sure if this is even possible with an indeterminant vine plant (other than being limited by external factors like end of season etc).

zone 8a

Thanks!

Great thanks for sharing!

Winter's coming haha