BROWNTOWN - Kim Hunter got worried when she saw a cop car pull up. Her crew was clearing weeds from a 200-foot drainage ditch, and she knew they looked unusual. She braced herself for a warning.
Then the officer got out and started taking pictures. For his children.
Hunter's crew is a herd of goats - cute but ravenous animals that will flatten a jungle of weeds and invasive plants in days, leaving behind only their deer-like droppings.
She doesn't need a mower.
"I mow everything with animals," she said. She calls her goats "furry locusts."
Hunter runs her business, The Green Goats, from a farm she bought last summer in rural Browntown. Each of her goats works for about $3 day to clear invasive weeds and brush in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. The operation has a "low carbon hoofprint," she jokes.
A writer and photographer, Hunter got into the goat business relatively late in life. She started out on her parents' six acres in Kenosha County in 2007, but soon outgrew it. Her goats have cleared land in urban areas, in suburbia and on farmland. Currently she has 72 goats from her 100-head herd working in an oak woodland on a private estate near Lake Geneva.
On a recent weekday morning on her farm, Hunter put two of her youngest to work, Portia and Mariah (named after the pop singer with a similarly piercing voice). Within seconds, the young goats are stripping and munching like it's their job.
"They're professionals," Hunter said. The alternative, hiring a crew of college kids to run exhaust-spewing mowers and other machines, would cost more and leave behind clippings. "The goats just leave it so much nicer."
To see these goats at work is like watching a competitive eating contest, except instead of hot dogs by the dozen, the meal is vegetarian and full of nasty weeds and plant invaders brought to this area by early immigrants. Goats will even gobble up poison ivy and ragweed.
Curious cops aren't the only audience the goats attract. On job sites on private land, Hunter has found lawn chairs and empty wine glasses along the perimeter of the goat work area.
Using goats to manage vegetation, noiselessly and without chemicals, is a growing industry. Operations similar to Hunter's are popping up across the country, with names like Rent-A-Ruminant, Rent-A-Goat, Goat Busters and Amazin' Grazers.
Hunter's green consciousness goes back to her childhood. She was 5 in 1966 when her family moved from northwest Indiana to Northbrook, Ill., just as it was being built up into a Chicago suburb.
"That sparked my environmental outrage, to see my play area turned into suburbs," she said.
She sees goats, essentially, as ecological workers.
"That's really what they're doing. They're rebalancing the ecosystem," she said.
A need for their services is growing in rural areas where city natives are buying up former farmland to build country homes.
"And they think they don't have to take care of it. They think it takes care of itself," Hunter said. But within five to 10 years, the land is an impenetrable jungle of invasive species growing unchecked, without natural competition.
"Nature is all about competition," Hunter said, and goats and other livestock are necessary competition to plants. Even centuries ago, before farms dominated the landscape, "two million buffalo used to do what the goats are doing."
Later this month, Hunter is getting married on her farm to her fiance Art Schmaltz, a sculptor and foraging enthusiast ("He's the only one I know who competes with the goats for food").
Portia and Mariah, the two young goats, "will be in the wedding with flowers around their necks," Hunter said.
She added, "Well, fake flowers. So they don't eat them."
Then the officer got out and started taking pictures. For his children.
Hunter's crew is a herd of goats - cute but ravenous animals that will flatten a jungle of weeds and invasive plants in days, leaving behind only their deer-like droppings.
She doesn't need a mower.
"I mow everything with animals," she said. She calls her goats "furry locusts."
Hunter runs her business, The Green Goats, from a farm she bought last summer in rural Browntown. Each of her goats works for about $3 day to clear invasive weeds and brush in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. The operation has a "low carbon hoofprint," she jokes.
A writer and photographer, Hunter got into the goat business relatively late in life. She started out on her parents' six acres in Kenosha County in 2007, but soon outgrew it. Her goats have cleared land in urban areas, in suburbia and on farmland. Currently she has 72 goats from her 100-head herd working in an oak woodland on a private estate near Lake Geneva.
On a recent weekday morning on her farm, Hunter put two of her youngest to work, Portia and Mariah (named after the pop singer with a similarly piercing voice). Within seconds, the young goats are stripping and munching like it's their job.
"They're professionals," Hunter said. The alternative, hiring a crew of college kids to run exhaust-spewing mowers and other machines, would cost more and leave behind clippings. "The goats just leave it so much nicer."
To see these goats at work is like watching a competitive eating contest, except instead of hot dogs by the dozen, the meal is vegetarian and full of nasty weeds and plant invaders brought to this area by early immigrants. Goats will even gobble up poison ivy and ragweed.
Curious cops aren't the only audience the goats attract. On job sites on private land, Hunter has found lawn chairs and empty wine glasses along the perimeter of the goat work area.
Using goats to manage vegetation, noiselessly and without chemicals, is a growing industry. Operations similar to Hunter's are popping up across the country, with names like Rent-A-Ruminant, Rent-A-Goat, Goat Busters and Amazin' Grazers.
Hunter's green consciousness goes back to her childhood. She was 5 in 1966 when her family moved from northwest Indiana to Northbrook, Ill., just as it was being built up into a Chicago suburb.
"That sparked my environmental outrage, to see my play area turned into suburbs," she said.
She sees goats, essentially, as ecological workers.
"That's really what they're doing. They're rebalancing the ecosystem," she said.
A need for their services is growing in rural areas where city natives are buying up former farmland to build country homes.
"And they think they don't have to take care of it. They think it takes care of itself," Hunter said. But within five to 10 years, the land is an impenetrable jungle of invasive species growing unchecked, without natural competition.
"Nature is all about competition," Hunter said, and goats and other livestock are necessary competition to plants. Even centuries ago, before farms dominated the landscape, "two million buffalo used to do what the goats are doing."
Later this month, Hunter is getting married on her farm to her fiance Art Schmaltz, a sculptor and foraging enthusiast ("He's the only one I know who competes with the goats for food").
Portia and Mariah, the two young goats, "will be in the wedding with flowers around their necks," Hunter said.
She added, "Well, fake flowers. So they don't eat them."