WESTPORT — Its goats found work right away “goatscaping properties” in Little Compton and Pardon Gray Preserve in Tiverton, while the rest of Weatherlow Farms — a new farm in town at 845 …
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WESTPORT — Its goats found work right away “goatscaping properties” in Little Compton and Pardon Gray Preserve in Tiverton, while the rest of Weatherlow Farms — a new farm in town at 845 Sodom Road — has gradually become operational.
The farm (www.weatherlowfarms.com) is beginning to produce grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, eggs, pork, lamb, and chevot (goat meat), as well as cut flowers, that it supplies to several area markets such as Lees in Westport and Simmons Market in Adamsville, "and a handful of restaurants in Boston, Providence and the Cape," said the farm's owner, Ryan Wagner.
The farm, is "just shy of 200 acres," said Mr. Wagner, who bought it in 2014 for $600,000, he said, from the Medeiros family who'd owned it for generations. The farm is subject to deed and conservation restrictions that limit its use to agricultural purposes. Mr. Wagner said it's safe to say he's made a seven figure investment in the property since then.
About 100 acres of the farm are set to be fields and pastures, and the other hundred are woodlands, 50 acres of which used to be pastures.
The farm features a new three-story 40 foot x 100 foot post-and-beam barn, finished with fieldstones at one end. It has a full foundation, and when fully finished out will have walk-in coolers, a main deck, ground floor, hayloft, a root cellar and a cheese cave.
The barn, built of Douglas Fir, is the centerpiece of what will be a retail center and commercial kitchen "for stuff coming off the farm," said Mr. Wagner.
Weatherlow has three 3,000-square-foot greenhouses, plus two outside acres for cut flower production.
Mr. Wagner said he currently has about 50 head of cattle (Herefords, Devons, Black and Red Angus), 80 sheep, and 300 chickens (Rhode Island Reds, "layers" he says), that are housed in a trailer (a "mobile chicken coop") that's moved around every two or three days to allow the chickens to roam in a pasture.
On the horizon, Mr. Wagner says, are farm-to-table dinners for 50-75 people next summer, using all local products, which will feature guest chefs from the region,
Mr. Wagner is a graduate of Colby College in Maine and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
"I come at this from a different background. I've been very active in a number of conservation efforts trying to change our food cycle. If we can be a part of that, it would be an accomplishment for us."
Goats: land management ambassadors
Weatherlow's goats are the Tiverton Land Trust's new approach — goatscaping — to land management this season at Pardon Gray Preserve in Tiverton.
"Yeah goats," said Garry Plunkett, who serves on the board of advisors for stewardship for the Trust.
"They're way better than cattle for restoring Pardon Gray's land."
"What we're hoping is to pioneer in the field," said Weatherlow's goat herder Rebecca Brown. "it's a way for landowners to control invasive or unwanted plants and to restore meadows and fields."
The farm maintains a herd of about 95 goats that it rents out for land management work. They've recently been at work at Warrens Point in Little Compton.
Look across the historic preserve of roughly 65 acres of open fields as you drive past on Main Road, and you may be able to see a team of about 50 adult and baby goats chomping their way through whatever grows out there.
They were there for a few weeks beginning at the end of last April, and return to Pardon Gray again sometime this week to chew down undesirable plant species until about November. .
The goats at Pardon Gray are kept in a movable electrified enclosure, that every four or five days is rotated around on about 20 acres of Trust land. There's a small trailer nearby in which they can seek shelter when they need it. Guarding them is Theodore Roosevelt (Ted), a massive three-year-old Great Pyrenees dog.
"The 20 acres being worked by the goats is some of the worst infested at the preserve, in terms of alien invasive species and woody perennials, such as Multiflora Rose, Japanese Privet, Autumn Olive, and Black Knapweed," said Mr. Plunkett said.
"They'll also eat honeysuckle and poison ivy," said Ms. Brown. "They also like grape vines, blackberry bushes, and blueberry bushes. They'll eat a little bit of everything. They're also trainable. and can be taught to eat certain things."
They're allergic to lilac, she said; it's poisonous to them.
Another benefit: goat manure is better for the land than cow manure, Mr. Plunkett said.
"These animals have a serious job," Ms. Brown said. "As it happens they're cute too, but when they're out clearing land, they have their work clothes on."
Helping Ms. Brown with the herding is Zeb, a border collie, who with a few words from Ms. Brown keeps the goats in a group. Plans are afoot for a demonstration of Zeb's herding talents with a selection of goats at the annual Country Day at Pardon Gray festivities on Saturday, September 17.
"Sheep don't do as well as goats at the job of clearing land," Ms. Brown said. "If you have a lot of woody and invasive plants, that's hands down going to be a goat job. Sheep would rather eat grass."
Asked if a lot of people smile when they think of goats, she said, "well I do, but I come at them from a land-management point of view. I'm not a puppy dog person, but baby goats are so cute."
What she likes most about goats, she said, is that "they're a natural land management tool, they're the most environmentally sound option, and more effective that grazing and burning."
No money is changing hands in the deal between Ms. Brown's goatscaping operation and the Tiverton Land Trust, said Mr. Plunkett. ""She gets free forage for her goats and we get the benefit of restoring our open grassland."
For the land trust, said Mr. Plunkett, one of the main benefits of using goats is "restoring the land to a point where ground-nesting birds, like the bobolink, Eastern meadowlark, grasshopper sparrow, and the American kestrel (a small endangered falcon) will return. They're all threatened by a loss of grassland habitat."
He named some of the other advantages: keeping the land open, preserving a mix of grasslands for livestock forage, "enhancing the habitat for pollinators like bees and butterflies," and accomplishing the restoration without the use of chemicals or herbicides, and without mowing (which can be destructive to ground-nesters). And without burning, Ms. Brown says.
"For purposes of land restoration, it just so happens that the most effective way to do it, in the shortest amount of time, with the longest lasting results, is to use goats," she said.
The goats Ms. Brown uses are "mostly Kiko's. They're the ones with floppy ears." Mixed in are a few Boer and Arapawa goats. The herd has grown in recent weeks to its present number. "We'll be breeding a number of them this fall," she said.
"We definitely hope people will go out and see them at Pardon Gray. The goats will just be doing their thing, so it's totally encouraged," she said.
A graduate of Union College with a background in the soil sciences, Ms. Brown, 37, grew up on a farm on Martha's Vineyard.