The plan was straightforward. Move the goats to the east paddock, run new fencing along the tree line, and give them more shade for the summer. We measured twice. We bought good posts. We were, briefly, very confident.
Goats are excellent at finding the one thing you didn’t think about. In this case it was a gap where the new fence met the old gate, roughly the width of a determined animal who has decided that the grass on the other side is worth the effort.
Every project here takes twice as long as planned and teaches us something we couldn’t have read anywhere.
By evening we had closed the gap, reinforced the corner and learned that the correct order of operations is fence, then gate, then goats. Not all three at once while losing daylight.
What we’d do differently
Three things, for anyone building something similar:
- Set the gate posts first. Everything else lines up off them.
- Walk the line at goat height before you call it finished.
- Do the animal move the following morning, not the same afternoon.
The east paddock is holding. The goats have shade. And the fence has been tested by the harshest quality-control team available.
If you come out to the farm this month, that’s the stretch along the tree line. Ask about it and you’ll get the longer version.
