Pruning Experts 🌿 Bring in the Goats!

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas

Ann Cihanek  0:03  
Hi! Come on, guys! Good morning!

Brett Barry  0:09  
Ann Cihanek is a goat farmer (whose herd of semi-retired goats is hired across the region to clear sights of invasive plants, brush, and overgrowth). In a moment, we'll join her in Delaware County (where ten of her goats are happily chowing down on an overgrown site of historic significance). Kaatscast is sponsored by Briars & Brambles Books. The go to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily. For more information, visit briarsandbrambles books.com or call 518-750-8599; and by the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce. Providing services to businesses, community organizations, and local governments in the Central Catskills region. Follow the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce on Facebook and sign up for a weekly email of local events at centralcatskills.org. Roxbury, New York is home to the famous naturalist (John Burroughs); and today, you can still visit his beloved Woodchuck Lodge and the John Burroughs Memorial State Historic Site, where he's laid to rest. Next to his grave is Boyhood Rock, a favorite spot during John's youth where he'd sit for hours and gaze across the family farm and fields ticking in the wild Catskills. Over the past century, farm and field have given away to tree and shrub (quite a few of them) and New York's Department of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation has attempted to restore the parcel to a more open state in keeping with its history. It's hilly, rocky terrain, though, makes it difficult to get machinery and to clear the brush and so (this summer), they've hired highly skilled goats. In particular, Ann Cihanek's Green Goats of Rhinebeck, New York.

Ann Cihanek  2:09  
So, we have had a privilege of bringing goats to the site. It's overgrown and they're here to help clear invasives. My name is Ann Cihanek (owner of Green Goats - Rhinebeck, New York).

Brett Barry  2:26  
So, the space looks a little different right now. It's all temporarily fenced, so that the goats have a defined area.

Ann Cihanek  2:34  
Yes.

Brett Barry  2:35  
How long of a stay to the goat's half-year is it until the work is done or ...

Ann Cihanek  2:40  
We're hoping about a month until the work is done. We would like them to eat the vegetation down and have it. Try to regrow over the summer months and bring them back in the fall.

Brett Barry  2:55  
How big of a space do you have cordoned off for them?

Ann Cihanek  2:57  
This is about a ... a little over an acre, I think.

Brett Barry  3:00  
Okay.

Ann Cihanek  3:01  
And its ... its slope. Hi, guys!

Brett Barry  3:04  
And just then some of the ten goats employed at this site came over to greet their handler.

Ann Cihanek  3:10  
Good morning! This is Lulu. Our goats are all donated to us from homes. They've had jobs before this. This is their second act and they're retired to us, but they eat for a living and they're effective because they eat leaves all summer and the plants try to regrow as they eat and it's not storing energy in the roots as it should to come back to follow in season.

Brett Barry  3:42  
So ... in a way, they're more effective than machinery or mowing because they're really getting to the root?

Ann Cihanek  3:49  
Exactly. If we mowed, it would come back like a lawn.

Brett Barry  3:54  
Now they seem to recognize you and are excited to see you. They all came running.

Ann Cihanek  3:59  
They are. They work for five months a year and so they're home at ... at the barn. They're neural pets.

Brett Barry  4:05  
How often do you check on them?

Ann Cihanek  4:07  
At this site, once a week (and every day, a park's employee waters and visits with them).

Brett Barry  4:14  
And when you come to check on them once a week, what are you looking for or are just checking in saying hello?

Ann Cihanek  4:19  
Checking in saying hello; looking at the invasive plants, see how ... how far they've gone that sort of thing. Every day (when the parks checks in), they send me a text and lots of cute photos. It says, "The goats are great!" We are reachable 24/7. We can do FaceTime. I could see a goat in real time (if they're having a question) and they have their goatels over there.

Brett Barry  4:47  
What are those?

Ann Cihanek  4:47  
Shelters.

Brett Barry  4:48  
Okay. If the weather gets nasty, they have a place to go.

Ann Cihanek  4:51  
Usually, they like tall trees, but makes us feel better that we've provided shelter. This is our seventeenth year in business and we started small to goats. My husband had goats in a prior marriage and broached me with the idea of how great they were; and I said to him, "I don't think so. I'm too damn cute for goats." I went away for the weekend (came back). My kids had two baby goats. I was very angry. I named them "Curry" and "Stew," and even though we're vegetarians, Curry and Stew became the first employees of Green Goats.

Brett Barry  5:35  
What experience have you had with animals before those baby goats came into your life?

Ann Cihanek  5:39  
None.

Brett Barry  5:39  
None.

Ann Cihanek  5:40  
None. It was quite a learning curve. We had just moved from Astoria and I learned a lot. My husband however it had extensive experience. He had one of the best milking averages in New York. He gives seminars at Cornell about goats, so he taught me a lot.

Brett Barry  6:04  
Ann obviously grew to love those goats and it's a good thing because (today) the herd number is 162 (each one of them donated by an individual or a club or a farm that could no longer care for them). Ann's Green Goats can be found region-wide at a number of simultaneous sites (where they've been hired for their unique landscaping abilities).

Ann Cihanek  6:28  
Most of our herd are a lot of our herds are male goats that are donated on a farm. You can't keep all the males. They usually end up being part of the food chain. Usually (if it's a smaller job), they're put out in pairs. If they're donated as a ... as a pair to us, they go out together. They're never separated because they are. They have relationships and do better together.

Brett Barry  6:59  
So, why goats? Tell me a little bit about the benefits of goats to clear a piece of property as opposed to machinery or manmade options.

Ann Cihanek  7:08  
When they do eat seeds off of the invasives, their acids in the stomach kills the seeds. They're not pooping out fertilized seeds. And also, they just love all the invasives (that parks want gone), so they've been very effective and they're very cute.

Brett Barry  7:29  
In terms of areas that are more sensitive (landwise, historic sites or places that are difficult to access), you don't want to muck up with big machinery. I guess, goats are ... are more nimble options.

Ann Cihanek  7:42  
They are nimble on ... on this is a ... this is a very difficult slope for machinery. Also, we've learned that there's lots of poison ivy. The parks have a lot of issue with their workers having poison ivy and having to go to the emergency room. The goats are not having a problem with that. So ...

Brett Barry  8:05  
Now we're at the John Burroughs site and he said of goats. "Of our ragweed not much can be set down that is complimentary, except that its name in the botany is AMBROSIA, food of the gods. It must be the food of the gods if anything, for, so far as I have observed, nothing terrestrial eats it, not even billy-goats." Do they eat ragweed?

Ann Cihanek  8:30  
No.

Brett Barry  8:30  
No.

Ann Cihanek  8:31  
No, he's right about that.

Brett Barry  8:32  
Wow!

Ann Cihanek  8:33  
He's right about that.

Brett Barry  8:34  
So, some things don't change.

Ann Cihanek  8:36  
That's true.

Brett Barry  8:37  
Ann's Green Goats are no stranger to historic sites. In fact, this natural defoliation business of theirs was launched seventeen years ago at Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island.

Ann Cihanek  8:50  
They had a huge problem with weeds taking over their ... their site and the historic buildings. We received an email along with about four hundred other goat farms (asking if we would bring goats). Everyone said, "No," except my husband, Larry, who thought, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," and we answered a call. Lots of people wrote to us and said, "How could you bring goats there?" and we did it. That was our first ... first job.

Brett Barry  9:25  
So, you're a bit of a trendsetter.

Ann Cihanek  9:27  
That was not what it felt like in the beginning, but hindsight sounds like that. No.

Brett Barry  9:33  
At the time, were you pretty much the only goat herd owners doing that?

Ann Cihanek  9:38  
Absolutely. I think we've stayed once in a while someone comes in to the business, but it's a lot more than just having goats and bringing them to sides.

Brett Barry  9:48  
Yeah, so tell me a little bit about that. What's the setup required? What kind of preparation do you have to do?

Ann Cihanek  9:53  
I think you have to have a brave person like ... like Chris that calls and says, "How about or we have heard of you and ... and how does this work?"

Brett Barry  10:03  
Chris is Chris Kenyon, the park manager who oversees John Burroughs Memorial Field State Historic Site.

Chris Kenyon  10:10  
So, this is the grave site of the famous naturalist author (John Burroughs) and it's on a property that was a part of his original homestead and the ... the property as much of the land in the Catskills is an old farm. So (over time), the landscape has changed. Trees have grown back. It's become more forested, but to preserve (kind of) the character (the site as it was when John Burroughs was alive), we want to maintain some of the open land (some of the open pasture and orchard) and preserve the views of the Catskills, which is his motivating factor for wanting to be interred here.

Brett Barry  10:52  
What are some of the species you're hoping to eliminate or reduce with this project?

Chris Kenyon  10:58  
This project is maybe a little bit different than other projects and that, you know, we're not targeting specific species (what we're really after are just reducing the amount of woody vegetation). There is a fair amount of invasive honeysuckle and other problems (species here), but there are also native species. A maple dogwood that we're just hoping to reduce the woody cover to (kind of) preserve that open character of the landscape here.

Brett Barry  11:26  
And to bring it back a little closer to what it looked like in John Burroughs' time?

Chris Kenyon  11:30  
Exactly.

Brett Barry  11:32  
And you're seeing changes?

Chris Kenyon  11:34  
We are. Yeah, it's amazing. One day to the next, the amount of vegetation is definitely being diminished. If you could see them here in person, you'd see that they're ... they're browsing away on the taller shrubs right now. They've definitely made an impact and it's only been about a week since they've first come on the site.

Brett Barry  11:58  
And what's it like working with Ann so far?

Chris Kenyon  11:59  
Oh, she's been a pleasure to work with and her whole family has been helping us. It was a great day. Last week (when we were setting up the fences), we had a crew here from our park staff working along (her and her son) and yeah, that was a fun day working with you, Ann, and yeah, been a real pleasure to work with you.

Ann Cihanek  12:21  
Same. Thank you.

Brett Barry  12:23  
And how old are your kids that work with you?

Ann Cihanek  12:25  
My son (Jordan) is 20. He's the last one at home, but we do have kids that live nearby. So, it just depends on what our needs are. My husband passed last fall. So, that's been having the kids in has been really helpful. We continue what we started and love what we've done as a business.

Most of our goats come from people that thought they were cute and got them. A lot of our goats are senior goats and males and they don't have to be their structures don't have to be sound. We never take them with papers because how we use them is not for breeding and that sort of thing. So, they don't have to look perfect. They just have to eat for a living.

Brett Barry  13:18  
Not a bad job?

Ann Cihanek  13:18  
Not a bad job. I like to have it.

Brett Barry  13:22  
And they're all named?

Ann Cihanek  13:23  
They're all named.

Brett Barry  13:24  
And you can identify all of them?

Ann Cihanek  13:25  
I can. I guess because they're donated a couple at a time over years. We do remember them.

Brett Barry  13:34  
How many of the herd are out working at any one time?

Ann Cihanek  13:37  
We have another job going in this week. This will be our forty-second location.

Brett Barry  13:46  
Over the history of the company?

Ann Cihanek  13:47  
Over the season.

Brett Barry  13:48  
Over this season.

Ann Cihanek  13:49  
Over the season.

Brett Barry  13:50  
Wow!

Ann Cihanek  13:51  
Our goats only work for about four months a year or so.

Brett Barry  13:56  
And in the colder months, they just chill out.

Ann Cihanek  13:58  
They chill out and dream of green pastures in the spring.

Brett Barry  14:03  
I asked the park manager (Chris Kenyon) what tactics they'd employed before Green Goats came along.

Chris Kenyon  14:08  
Park staff had tried to brush hogging this with a tractor (a number of years ago) and due to the rocky landscape here, it just wasn't ... wasn't very practical. There was a lot of hidden hazards. Say, I think they did some damage to the brush hog trying to work with that. And so, we ... we basically resorted to manual cutting; and just over the years, it's gotten away from us a little bit. So, this ... this will hopefully get us to a point where we've restored the site enough that we can continue with mechanical means and maybe just bring back the goats every ... every three to five years or something like that. You know, it certainly provides a kind of a gentler touch on the land, and then coming in here with ... with tractors and ... and large equipment.

Brett Barry  14:56  
And this site isn't alone. I asked Ann about some of the other places that stand out in her memory.

Ann Cihanek  15:02  
We've done cemeteries, golf courses ... a job that has lots of people that are always excited. Riverside Park in Manhattan. We've done Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. I'm always excited because (I think) I represent a newer phase of a farmer and when we're in urban areas, especially when schools visit, they are always surprised when I turn up and I happen to be what they call the 'goat lady.' So, that's ... that's an added benefit. It never gets old; bringing goats to a place for the first time letting ... letting them in to eat a lot of our goats. The new ones ... Peggy and Domino ... they're new to our herd and they've never been in pasture like this before. As a matter of fact, I think they're fed (hay and grain and that's it). To see them come out here and have all this is just the best thing ever. I love what I do. It's a good thing.

Brett Barry  16:14  
Next time you're in Roxbury, it's a short walk to Boyhood Rock (where thanks to Ann's Goats, the view is much closer to what a young John Burroughs might have experienced). There's a link in the show notes. While you're in Delaware County, check out Hanford Mills Museum, where you can explore the power of the past as he watched the waterwheel bring their working sawmill to life. Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond. For more information about scheduling a tour or about their new exploration days, visit hanfordmills.org or call 607-278-5744. Thanks also to the Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like the Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call 518-763-6854 or email: mountaineaglenews@gmail.com. Kaatscast is a biweekly production of Silver Hollow Audio (an outpost for quality sound production in the heart of the Catskills). More at silverhollowaudio.com. If you're a fan of this podcast, please spread the word and give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or kaatscast.com, so more people can find us. Kaatscast.com is also where you can find our entire catalogue of episodes (searchable by keyword and transcript text). Join the mailing list or make a donation. Until next time, I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening.