Augusta County Farm Couple Raises Meat Goats on Diet of Unwanted Plants
WAYNESBORO, Va. — Necessity was indeed the mother of Autumn Olive Farms’ invention.
Six years ago, Clay and Linda Trainum were living near Greensboro, N.C., when an extremely severe drought burned their pastures to nothing. By June, the couple was feeding hay to their small herd of Boer goats.
As lawns and fields suffered, however, the Trainums noticed that the plants growing along a nearby utility easement, mostly invasive plants like honeysuckle and multiflora rose, seemed to be thriving.
In desperation, the Trainums herded their goats along the road to the lush easement to let the goats feed twice a day. The animals loved it, and somewhere in the process, a connection was made in the couple’s heads: If goats like these plants so much, why not let them eat the stuff all the time?
It sounded like a classic win-win — goats grow fat and happy while clearing land choked by unwanted plants — with significant market potential: Invasive plant control costs tens of billions of dollars each year in the U.S.
By 2011, it had become full-fledged reality. Having returned to Clay’s family farm in Augusta County, Va., both he and Linda have been working full-time since last January with their growing business, named after another invasive goat delicacy, the autumn olive.
In the spring, summer and fall, the couple focuses on placing and managing their 280-animal herd on specific tracts of land an owner wants cleared of invasive plants, while in the winter, they market their Boer goat meat — the healthiest, most sustainable meat around, they say — to restaurants and other customers in the region.
According to the Trainums, the goats represent an extremely effective and sustainable model of invasive species control, ideally suited for organic agriculture, sensitive watersheds and almost any other patch of land choked, or threatened, by quick-growing invasive plants.
The goats fertilize pastures and fields with their droppings. They don’t particularly like grass, so they selectively clear pastures of other plants instead of competing with cattle. They hate getting wet, so they don’t erode stream banks. Finally, because the goats often defoliate entire bushes, they cause unwanted plants enormous stress and can kill them outright more effectively than mowing.
As is the case for all farmers, profitability remains a concern for the Trainums, which is where the Boer goats come in. Bred specifically as meat goats, the hardy, fast-growing Boers are essential to the Trainums’ bottom line because to turn a profit, the farm needs income both from renting the herd to landowners and from the meat (Clay and Linda also sell vegetables in the summer).
Other breeds are just as good at eating autumn olive and other invasives, but they don’t grow as well on the diet. With their Boers, however, the Trainums are optimistic about the future.
“We’re crazy enough to think that this is an important, sustainable farming model whose time has come,” said Clay.
While the newness and cost of the goat method have been barriers to conventional farmers hiring the Autumn Olive goats, the Trainums market their approach widely in the region. Many of their clients, including the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, are interested in gentle, sustainable methods of reclaiming land that’s been choked out by invasive plants.
Late this year, the City of Waynesboro also launched a trial partnership with Autumn Olive Farms, in which the goats are controlling invasive plants in a large city park that surrounds one of the city’s primary water reservoirs. In this case, the goats are working in exchange for free food, sparing the Trainums the cost of winter feeding (usually, the landowner pays for the goats’ services).
“It seemed to be a win-win for everybody,” said Dwayne Jones, director of parks and recreation for the City of Waynesboro.
Additionally, because their goats have become popular attractions in a heavily used park, the Trainums hope to benefit from publicity.
The couple struck a similar deal this month with the owner of a subdivision just outside Waynesboro that has been shelved thanks to economic circumstances. For the past six or seven years, the owners mowed the property about three times per year; now, the goats are out keeping the bushes and trees down while defraying the Trainums’ cost of feeding them.
“It works well for them and it works well for us,” said Don Bosserman, vice president of operations for Countryside Services Co., which owns the subdivision. “So we’re pretty excited about it.”
So, it seems, is everyone else: Clay and Linda smile as their herd fans out across the yet-to-be-built subdivision, happily devouring every unwanted plant they can find.
http://www.lancasterfarming.com/news/southeedition/-Augusta-County-Farm-Couple-Raises-Meat-Goats-on-Diet-of-Unwanted-Plants-
Clay and Linda Trainum, of Autumn Olive Farms in Waynesboro, Va., raise Boer goats for meat on a diet of invasive plants. The Trainums rent their goats, who devour and thrive on autumn olive and other invasive plants, to landowners for property management, and then sell their goat meat to restaurants and other outlets.
The Frontier Culture Museum site offers a comparison between the left side of the road, where the goats haven’t been, and the right side, where they have foraged.
This December, the Trainums put their goats on an unbuilt subdivision just outside Waynesboro, where they keep the land clear and spare the owner the expense and time of bushogging the property.
The Trainums' Boer goats are voracious browsers, and can reach foliage up to seven feet off the ground. Pictured here in a field in a Waynesboro city park, the goats are in unusual pasture habitat. They prefer thick, bushy forage like that pictured on the left side of the photo.
Monday, April 30, 2012 at 1:49PM 
