Modern Pastoralists use Goats to Reduce Weeds and Fire

Tim and Lynda Linquist are using an old technique to solve modern problems. The couple’s business, We Rent Goats, employs one of the oldest domesticated animals. Their goats are an environmentally friendly way to remove weeds and brush, and reduce fire hazards.

The Linquists set up woven electric fences, and then deliver goats and burly white guard dogs that protect the herd from coyotes and stray dogs. They check on the animals often and are only a phone call away if there are problems. Landowners pay from $350 to $600 an acre for a one-time treatment. The cost depends on the complexity of the fencing required, the vegetation on the site, and transportation costs. The entertainment provided by the goats is free.

The rental goats are minimizing the fire danger in several Boise foothills neighborhoods this spring. Colten Tippetts, Town Manager at Hidden Springs, uses the goats on slopes too steep for mowers and brush cutters. The animals also fit in with the rural focus of the planned community.

The Idaho Transportation Department is using the goats for the first time this year to mow around stormwater retention basins. Shawn Strong, with ITD’s southwest Idaho vegetation crew, said the goats control weeds without the risk of herbicides getting into waterways.

Later in the summer, the herds will remove rush skeleton weed in some of the City of Boise’s foothills reserves. “We usually get good response from the public to the goats, because people enjoy watching them. Herbicide application freaks more people out than goats do,” said Julia Grant, Boise’s Foothills and Open Space Manager. Grant added that, despite warning signs on the low-voltage fence, people can get a shock, especially if they’re unlucky enough to fall onto the fence.

In addition to removing an invasive weed, the goats reduce fire danger. “Weeds are problem number one, but fire and weeds are so intertwined,” Grant said. Weeds allow fire to spread and then often sprout in burned areas before the native plants can recover.

After the weed and fire seasons are over, the Linquists’ goats spend the fall cleaning up alfalfa and organic hops fields. Then the goats have a few months off before they start kidding in late March. By May, the growing kids are ready to go to work with their mothers and the cycle starts again.

When Lynda, 28, and Tim, 36, met, they discovered a shared love for goats. Lynda’s pet goat William went everywhere with her and rode shotgun in her Jeep. Tim had started with 25 goats on his five acres near Wilder, Idaho. He saw a business opportunity when a friend in California wanted brush cleared from his land: Tim increased his herd to 200 and put them all to work.

The couple brought the goats back to Wilder in December 2009. That year, they were all due to kid early. Tim remembered, “I didn’t think it was going to be that bad; we had kidded goats before, but not in the snow and not that many. We were in for an education.” Lynda added, “We had a hard freeze first thing. If we didn’t get the babies into the barn under a heat lamp, they would freeze to the ground within 15 minutes.”

Tim’s job kept him on the road four or five days a week. That left Lynda, who had job closer to home, in charge of the 200 mothers-to-be. Early in 2010, Tim had used up all his vacation time and realized that weed-eating goats were a full time business. He quit his job at the end of April. “It was the best decision I ever made, after marrying Lynda,” he said.

Lynda, the president of We Rent Goats, participated in Boise’s MicroEnterprise Training and Assistance (META) program. This nonprofit helps women, new Americans, minorities, and other low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs in southwest and south central Idaho. META’s business classes and coaching have been a big help to the new business owners. “I had to learn everything,” Lynda said. “They helped me write a business plan, I learned to use accounting software--everything. And I was a psych major.”

The Linquists have adopted the nomadic lifestyle of many herders before them. The couple gave up their home in Wilder for a fifth wheel travel trailer, which lets them stay near their animals on their yearly circuit of open space, waterways, and agricultural fields. The first two years on the road were challenging. “We were goat ranchers, but we had to learn about portable fencing and being a mobile goat operation. We’re fencing experts now,” Lynda said.

As their client list grows, Tim and Lynda are increasing their herd. They keep the best females for breeding and sell the rest, plus the young males, for meat. The animals are raised humanely and certified as Animal Welfare Approved.

We Rent Goats needs to add people, too. They hire one or two summer employees every year, but they need more if they’re going to continue to grow. As Tim pointed out, though, it takes a special person to care for the goats properly, work with the dogs, and travel constantly. Acquiring land is the biggest challenge most new ranchers and farmers face. “We need a home base, someplace for the does to kid; a place to land if anything happens,” Tim said. Even agricultural lenders are surprised by the couple’s business model. While feed is a major expense for most livestock operations, the Linquists’ goats are paid to eat. “People can’t believe how low our feed costs are, especially now with hay being $200 a ton,” Tim explained.

Until they buy land, Lynda and Tim spend the off-season with their goats on empty patches of land near Boise. They find that bringing a herd of goats with them opens doors, as most people fall in love with the engaging animals. Being around the herd has a soothing effect on people and seems to bring back memories of an ancient way of life.

Trash the Fat

I heard a splash when I tossed my filthy Tevas into the empty bathtub, so I could wash them. Behind the shower curtain, I saw the gray Idaho silt from my sandals mixing with dishwater, spaghetti, and tomato paste. A ring of meatball grease circled the tub. The neighbors’ kitchen sink had backed up while I was in the field for a week.

Our 1940s-era apartments had nooks for phones, built-in folding ironing boards, and Murphy beds, but no garbage disposals. I was most dismayed by the food I found floating with my Tevas, but I learned recently that the meatball grease probably caused more problems for the city.

Meridian, Idaho’s Go with the Flow Tour on June 6, 2013 followed the path water takes from the city’s wells to its wastewater treatment plant.

We filled bottles at one of the wells, were subjected to wet pranks at the water tower, and drove up Meridian Road, where the city is laying new water lines while the road is being widened.

At our final stop we saw how gravity and bacteria do the heavy lifting at the treatment plant. Gravity settles out solids into sludge and various kinds of bacteria break down dissolved impurities. The city's short film about water's outbound journey from our homes premiered at the tour. You can watch it here.

We learned that the unattractive foam on wastewater is produced by a bacterium that feeds on grease.

Microthrix parvicella forms hair-like filaments less than 1/100th the width of a human hair. The bacteria produce foam that creates problem at the treatment plant and requires special techniques to control.

The City of Meridian's Trash the Fat program reduces the amount of cooking grease reaching the wastewater facility. The Environmental Division gives away plastic scrapers and lids. Just scrape grease into a can, cover with the lid, and put in the fridge. The grease will solidify when it cools. Then put the can in the trash--but keep the lid for next time.

If you’re wondering what happens to grease that gets into the sewer, the Meridian Environmental Division shows you here. Don’t look while you’re eating.

If I'd known then what I know now, the almost-20-year olds living next door would have received a house-warming gift of a plastic scraper and lid.

Good Riddance to the Great Inversion

Although temperatures are still a bit below normal in Boise, we no longer hear the phrase, "historic cold snap" as part of the forecast. When we hit the upper 50s later this week, I’m going to declare an end to the winter of 2012-13 and say good riddance to the Great Inversion.

Our raw, windy Christmas day turned to snow at dusk. The freeway between Nampa, where I spent the day, and Boise, where I live, was closed: there had been a deadly accident on the icy highway. I crept home on a tractionless and largely deserted side road.

After Christmas, the weather got worse. A large high pressure system moved in over the Pacific Northwest. It brought warm, sunny, dry air that expanded over the existing cold, moist air, trapping it in the valleys. We were socked in tighter than the Republican voting block in the Idaho legislature.

Boise festered at the bottom of the Great Inversion for a month and a half. Day after dismal day, we woke to sinister fog. We dragged ourselves out of bed and fought the urge to go the airport, walk to a ticket counter, and scream, “I don’t care what it costs; get me out of here!” We struggled through a world of suspended ice crystals that pierced our winter jacket-sweater-turtle neck-long underwear layers. We compared notes with coworkers, cashiers, and hairdressers, “I haven’t seen a winter like this in the [fill in the blank with the number of years you’ve lived in Boise] years I’ve been here!” I heard numbers as high as 36. At night, we collapsed in bed, exhausted from the effort of moving through a thousand-foot thick blanket of ice, car exhaust, wood stove smoke, and sugar beet processing plant effluent.

Just after the New Year, I was hurrying to catch the bus, head down, watching for ice on the sidewalk, so I didn't fall and break a bone, or the laptop in my pack. As I passed a small maple tree, I thought I heard a robin chirp. “Wow; the inversion really got to me,” I thought. “I’m having auditory hallucinations of spring.”

Two weeks later, before the sun was up enough for a clear photo, the back yard of my apartment complex swarmed with dozens of flitting, hopping, flapping male robins. They gobbled juniper berries off the trees by the neighbor’s garage. So many birds were jockeying for perches that each one was only able to grab a few of the dusty, purple cones (as botanists call them) before being displaced by another male. Junipers aren’t made for sitting, so the birds fluttered frantically around the edges of the dense, bristly, branches, trying to impersonate hummingbirds long enough to find a landing spot with food nearby.

The flocks of robins returned several more early mornings over the next week. On their last visit, they were reduced to cleaning up previously rejected cones on the ground under the trees.

I wonder how the flocks of robins fared during the Great Inversion. They return every year in mid January and every year it seems to me that they made a poor decision. I noticed them earlier than usual this year and I fear that this year’s trip might have been a fatal mistake for many. This spring, I’ll watch the robins quarrel over nesting territories and listen to them advertise their new digs and search for a mate with more fondness than usual. While the winter of the Great Inversion was trying our sanity, and the strength of our bones when we slipped on the ice, the male robins returned and carried on as usual. They returned and promised us that spring really would come again after all.

My Grandmother's Favorite Apples

I got out my Imperial Veri-Sharp paring knife with the stainless steel blade. My grandmother would have approved. To her mind, stainless was next to godliness: it lasted forever and was easy to keep clean. As a Trustee of her local hospital in the 1950s, she insisted that all the new sinks be stainless steel.

I selected one of the Stayman's Winesaps. They were my grand- mother’s favorite apple; she said that a “Delicious apple” was an oxymoron. When I learned Otis and Barbara had one of the trees in their Boise backyard, I banished politeness and asked for some of the fruit.

I rinsed off the faint wash of white clay that dulled the apple’s skin. Otis meant to spray the fruit with kaolin clay every two weeks. But he often let a bit more time pass before he got out his hand pump sprayer and applied another coat. Insects hoping for a meal of apples, or to lay eggs in their flesh, don’t like walking or crawling through the clay particles. They leave clay-covered fruits alone.

I cut around the apple’s meridian from the top to the blossom end and back up the other side. Then I trimmed away the stem and the remains of the dried blossom from each half and carefully cut around the core, or pome, which gives apples, pears, and quince their name (“pome fruit”). When she cored an apple, my grandmother left a smooth, shallow dimple. I tend to gouge out uneven divots that take some of the flesh, too: I waste good food. I can still hear my grandmother chide me whenever I reach for a vegetable peeler instead of a knife: “Peelers waste so much.”

She served chicken on one of my visits. I thought I did a fine job of cleaning my plate: I left a pile of bones connected by ligaments, tendons, and a few shreds of meat in the hard-to-reach places. My grandmother reduced her chicken to a pile of clean, dry, disarticulated bones that would have inspired a colony of dermestid beetlesto work longer hours.

Otis had ensured that their tree produced good-sized Stayman’s Winesap apples, so I cut each half into slices. Standing on his tripod orchard ladder, he had thinned the fruit when the developing apples were about the size of one of his fingernails. He removed all but one from each cluster of flowers; if there were still too many fruits along a branch, he removed entire clusters.

Biting into the first slice, I tasted the pink and white perfume of last spring’s apple blossoms. Bee legs tickled the inside of my cheek and a pollen basket might have brushed my tongue. That bee, or another one, must have spilled a few grains of pollen from one of its baskets onto the flower that produced the apple I was eating.

Most of the foods we eat, other than grains (corn, wheat, barley, etc.), must be pollinated by insects, and bees do most of the work. Whenever I see a truck loaded with hives of honeybees on their way to a pollinating job, I can’t resist waving. I wave and I worry about the bees’ dwindling numbers, as Colony Collapse Disorder ravages hives across the country. Researchers don’t completely understand the cause, or treatment, of the disorder: disease, stress, and pesticides are all suspects.

I ate the Stayman's Winesap slowly. All things in moderation; don’t be greedy; live within your means. My grandmother lived within her means. When my brothers and I were kids, she lived in the house her grandfather built in 1873. We assumed everyone’s grandmother had a commode chair with a chamber pot in the downstairs bedroom and a wood-burning range in the kitchen.

When she was 80, my grandmother built a new house, after realizing it would be cheaper than fixing up her old one. Her new house had hardwood floors, marble windowsills, thermal pane windows, a tiled fireplace hearth with a mantelpiece made from a maple tree that grew in her woods, and a small greenhouse off the garage. Her new house did not have a mortgage.

The wood-burning range went into the basement of her new house, “for when the power goes out.” The refrigerator wasn’t worn out yet, so she put it in the basement, too, and stored apples and other fruit in it. As I swallowed the last bite of my first Stayman’s Winesap, I remembered my grandmother's new kitchen. She bought a new fridge, an electric range, and her first dishwasher. The range and the dishwasher were clad in stainless steel.

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More about apples

The apples we see in the grocery store are only a tiny sample of the thousands of varieties that exist. Orchards planted by early European settlers in Idaho contain valuable genetic resources. Learn how this diversity is being cataloged and preserved here.

European honeybees, which travel from orchard to orchard in hives, aren't our only pollinators. Learn more about our 4,000 species of native bees here.

Have a Cheatgrass Beer and Help the Great Basin

Revenge is a dish best served cold: about 45 degrees for amber ales. Tye Morgan has a plan to foil cheatgrass and heal native Great Basin plant communities by brewing beer. She told Ira Flatow about it recently on NPR’s Science Friday .

As an environmental researcher, Tye works to manage cheatgrass in the West. In her off hours, she and her husband Joe are home brewers who teach others how to turn grains, hops, yeast, and water into ales, lagers, and stouts in Reno, Nevada. When she combined her knowledge of how cheatgrass spreads with her love of brewing, Tye came up with a way to restore cheatgrass-invaded areas while producing beer. "Every time people drink our beer, they are doing something to save their desert," she told a local news outlet.

Cheatgrass lives fast and dies young

Conservationists, ranchers, and fire fighters shudder when nonnative cheatgrass dies to form a carpet of tinder in early summer.

Although our native plants also burn, stands of cheatgrass stalks carry flames especially well. What’s more, cheatgrass has already assured its survival by the time fire season rolls around. The plants produce a bumper crop of seeds each spring--up to 65,000 per square meter--that sprout into new plants the following fall.

Our native perennial grasses and sagebrush employ a different strategy. Rather than going through the hot, dry summer as seeds, they hunker down and survive as dormant live plants. Rooted in place, they can't run and are easily killed by fire.

When the ashes and the weather have cooled, cheatgrass seeds blow or hitch rides on fur or socks into burned areas. The seeds soon germinate and grow quickly. The uninvited guests are the only ones at the table, now that the native plants are dead or damaged. Cheatgrass gobbles up soil nutrients to produce the next year’s crop of seeds.

By harvesting cheatgrass seeds each year, Tye hopes to both reduce the number of cheatgrass plants and lower the soil fertility. She believes that repeatedly taking off the nitrogen-rich seeds will reduce the level of this nutrient in the soil. Nitrogen in the soil is like the money in your checking account: if you keep taking it out and spending it, the amount left will drop.

Lower nitrogen fertility will begin to starve out the fast-growing cheatgrass. Our native plants, with their more tortoise-like approach to the race for survival, thrive with lower soil nitrogen. Tye will monitor cheatgrass seeds and soil nutrients to know when to reseed the area with native plants to give them the best chance to develop vigorous stands that keep cheatgrass at bay.

Amber ale and more

Ira Flatow tasted Tye and Joe’s cheatgrass beer and pronounced it "delicious." Tye explained to the Science Friday host that they mix barley with the cheatgrass seeds to brew an amber ale. Barley adds enzymes that cheatgrass lacks, which turn starch in the seeds into sugars. Once the sugars are released, the yeast can convert them into alcohol.

But the couple isn’t satisfied with just one type of beer. Their company, Bromus Tech, is working with Lance Jergensen, an independent malster who specializes in local barleys for niche beers, and Ryan Quinlan, at Great Basin Brewery, to develop several different cheatgrass beers.

Tye points out that agricultural chemicals are rarely used on the rangelands that cheatgrass invades. She plans to use the seeds left after the brewing process to finish organic grass fed beef for market. Soon, you'll be able to have an organic grass-fed cheatgrass-finished burger with your cheatgrass beer.

Once they’ve perfected their line of beers and fine-tuned their restoration techniques, Tye and Joe will share their knowledge with other brewers. Tye envisions small breweries across the West harvesting local cheatgrass and producing delicious beers. "I think that Idaho cheatgrass beer would catch on like wildfire," she told Ira Flatow.

Trapping Miller Moths in Military Reserve, Boise

Miller moths and their army cutworm larvae are well known east of the Rocky Mountains. Although the insects are not as common west of the Rockies, they occasionally reach high numbers. I suspect that army cutworms were at least partly responsible for the “disappearance” of nearly a million acres of cheatgrass in the Intermountain West in 2003. Counting miller moths each fall can tell us how many army cutworms we might have the next spring. If we knew when to expect an outbreak, we could be ready to reseed the bare areas with more desirable plants.

Miller moths and army cutworms east of the Rockies

Miller moths are unwelcome spring and fall visitors to the Front Range in Colorado. Although the insects are familiar pests when they cluster around lights and invade homes, few residents are aware of the impressive trip these tiny creatures make.

The moths that move through Denver and Fort Collins each spring hatched in the soil of the Great Plains the previous winter. The larvae spent the following months hiding in the soil during the day and feeding above ground at night. When active, the larvae eat young plant leaves--sometimes, down to the ground. Emerging fields of wheat, and other plants, are just the right height for the hungry “armies.” After the larvae reach full size, they pupate in the soil. When they emerge as miller moths, they are ready to migrate west.

Although the moths sometimes linger along the Front Range for weeks, their summer home is high elevation slopes of the Greater Yellowstone area. The insects feed on nectar at night and hide among the rocks of cool talus slopes during the day. The moths’ habit of congregating in certain areas makes it easy for grizzly bears to find one of their main foods. At least two popular books have described grizzlies rolling over rocks to feast on miller moths: Cold Case, by Stephen White and Blood Lure, by Nevada Barr. When the weather cools, the moths return to the Great Plains to lay eggs that will hatch the following winter.

Miller moths and army cutworms in the Intermountain West

The winter of 2002-03 was unusually warm and dry around Winnemucca, NV. That spring a BLM employee noticed bare areas where he expected to see cheatgrass. He called the new USGS plant ecologist in Boise to ask what she thought it was. I told him I didn’t know, but I’d take a look.

I didn't find any answers by looking at the miles-wide bare areas. A rancher I stopped to ask said that army cutworms were responsible. He saw larvae “eating every green shoot” on a warm January evening and took some of them to the USDA, where they were identified as army cutworms.

Despite the eyewitness account every entomologist I told the story to laughed: army cutworms couldn’t eat all the plants in an area. It took four months to find another witness, a researcher in northern Utah who saw larvae eating cheatgrass in his field plots. Finally, I found entomologists who had seen army cutworms devouring cheatgrass and young crops in western Colorado and northern New Mexico. I concluded that the rancher in Winnemucca really had seen army cutworm eating cheatgrass.

I suspect that army cutworms were at least partly responsible for the “disappearance” of nearly a million acres of cheatgrass in the Intermountain West in 2003. (Full disclosure: other researchers scoff at the idea.) I hope to learn more about these insects, their distribution, and their migration patterns west of the Rockies.

Although we haven't had a big army cutworm year since 2003, the insects are still present in the Intermountain West and will increase again with the right conditions. As our weather becomes warmer and more variable, the chances of another warm, dry winter increase. Counting miller moths each fall can tell us how many army cutworms we might have the next spring. When we see a lot of miller moths in the fall and then have a warm, dry winter, we should start looking for larvae in early spring.

Trapping Miller Moths in Military Reserve, Boise

If we knew when to expect an outbreak of army cutworms, we could be ready to reseed the bare areas with more desirable plants. The seeded plants would have a head start on the cheatgrass and it would be easier for them to grow into a healthy stand.

I trapped miller moths in Military Reserve, in the foothills of the Boise Front, this fall. Pheromones--scents that female moths make to attract males--lured male moths into the traps.

Julia Grant, Boise's Foothills And Open Space Manager, is collaborating in this work. Julia is using weed-eating goats and kids in soccer cleats to manage weeds and restore burned areas at Military Reserve, one of Boise's open space reserves.