Poison Ivy

[Kittish]

...goats always did scare me just a little...

It's the eyes. Nothing natural should have rectangular pupils.

Poison ivy and poison oak never seemed to effect me. I do recall one memorable event, though, from when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. We lived on the outskirts of an area being developed, so there was lots of open land all grown up with weeds and scrub. We kids all got the brilliant idea one day to go play in the lot covered with ragweed. Stuff was taller than we were, so it made for terrific hide and seek. I was covered, literally head to toe, with a rash from the ragweed. Mother put me in the bathtub, and started pouring bottles of calomine over me.

 

[mx5inpenn]

I've never had a reaction to poison ivy even though it was everywhere in the woods behind my childhood home.

One of my brothers, on the other hand, appears to break out from just looking at it from 10' away. I remember when he was maybe 8 or 9, he was a typical boy and just "watered a tree" when he needed to. I think my mom kept IvyDry and calamine going through his childhood.

 

[WyvernWench]

I'm not quite old enough to have been a hippie in the 60s, but in the late 70s I was told by an older co-worker that I would have been a good "flower child."

Soon after my hubby and I got our little piece of scrub ground our state started a program called Wild Acres. They taught then and still do about the advantages to doing nothing to your land and allowing large areas to return to natural pastures and grass lands.

Half our land is forest, but its young forest ... probably not over 100 years at the most. Right now we have three or four standing dead trees, one which is the long term home of a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers. A few of the oaks are finally tall enough to attract Baltimore Orioles. In this half I have my house and my flower beds.

The other half is allowed to grow wild. We rotate mowing this area by thirds, mowing one third each year just to keep the saplings down.

My fence row which is so old it is held up only by the wild grapevines and honeysuckles is so over grown - please don't tell anyone that I liberally lace it with fertilizer whenever I can - that the neighbors can't see in.

Like you, we love the natural part of our land as much as the cultivated area and we especially love that our little, tiny farmstead adds to the environment. I can't boast about nettles, but I do have a wonderfully, gnarly batch of briar roses and bramble vines. And our fence line is filled with sassafras which is the only tree on which the Swallowtail Butterflies lay their eggs.

 

[WyvernWench]

Goats are a good way to get rid of poison ivy. Stake 'em out where they can reach it and they'll eat it down to nothing. Move as necessary.

Don't have any goats? I've heard that it's becoming "a thing" for older 4-H kids to own goats and rent them for clearing brush and poison ivy. One of my cousin's oldest son made a couple thousand doing that last summer. Delivered them in the morning, staked them out, and picked them up at night for something like $40 a day.

Many, many years ago ... well, 1989, I was chatting with my best friend and her husband who was a truck driver but had shattered his leg and hip. He was giving her fits because he was stuck in the house all day long with her and the kids.

I suggested to him exactly what you have shared. I said he should get himself a herd of goats, rent them out during the day to County Roads to clean the ditches and fence lines, then milk them in the evening. He could get a profit off of both ends of his livestock.

Three days later was my birthday and she knocks at my door. She is holding this bundle in her arms wrapped up in a towel. And out of that towel is this very odd, very little goat nose. She was sure that because I was so enthusiastic about her husband getting goats it must have been because I wanted one myself.

Odat, short of Oh Dat D#$nEd Goat, was only three days old. I had no pen, I had no goat house, but I now have a three day old goat that needs bottle feeding. So, I spend most of my day at our local Southern States buying Goat Milk Replacer, milking bottles, and nipples and then off to the library to borrow a copy of 'Starting Right with Dairy Goats'.

For about two weeks he slept in the living room with our dog, he happily followed my five year old son everywhere, and he settled himself right into our family.

So, with the goat pen and goat house finally ready we moved Odat out of the house and up to his permanent home.

.... Wait for it ..... Goats are herd animals .... Goats get terrified when they find themselves alone .... To this day I am still amazed that our nearest neighbor, about 1/5 of a mile away, didn't call the cops on us for viscously slaughtering some poor animal because of the horrendous screams that were coming out of that little guys mouth.

Now I couldn't bring him back to the house. My best friend didn't get me just any goat, she got me a Toggenburg Billy which at full growth was destined to be between 125 to 150 pounds and would stand tall enough that his withers would reach the top of my hip. There was no way that goat could be a house pet.

So I and my husband did the only rational thing we could do. First we threw our dog into the pen with the goat so that the goat would be with someone and quit screaming. Then we gathered up our son from school. And then we headed directly to our local goat farm and bought our Odat his own friend, another wether Toggenburg whom we named Butter Bear!

We had Odat and Butter Bear for about four years when another friend offered to take them to his farm where they would have 40 acres and a full milking herd of Nubian goats for company.

Goats are just delightful pets, smart as a whip, and were a great way to teach our son about responsibility, care, and nurturing of animals. If I had the chance today to get another goat I wouldn't .... I'd get three or four or many a baker's dozen.

For those who might not know Toggenburgs are your classic, woolly faced, bearded farm goats and a wether is a male goat that has been neutered, usually within a day or two of birth, and therefore doesn't really know 'wether' he's a boy or a girl!

Thanks for letting me share.