Breach!

We have had many problems with containment of animals.  Abraham has been sold for butcher due to the sour taste he left in our mouths after his continuous escapes to the shed for a snack.  The chickens haven't ever been confined, and while they may be in a pen with the gate closed, they come and go as they please.  The goats are a constant challenge as you cannot keep a goat in a pen that they do not want to be in (unless it is a concrete cell).

Today, the goats not only left their pen (as the word "escape" implies that we are trying to keep them in still - we have, in fact resigned ourselves to their ability to walk through hot wire fences), but they found their way into my garden.  Only by the grace of God (and the good eyes of one of my boys) did we notice them relatively early. 

Amidst screaming and running (mostly me), we made our way to the garden, turning off the hot wire that "protects" it along the way, and forced the goats out.  It wasn't as easy as just pushing them out, I had to make a way out for them by lowering the fence that was all of a sudden something they feared.  But I managed to get it down quickly and the boys pushed and pulled the goats out of the veggies.

Now, I have to admit that the garden fence was set up as an illusion.  It does not fully enclose the garden, as the pivot runs through it and we have to allow for the wheel tracks.  But I created a long line of hot wire that stretched far beyond the garden and curved away from the field.  My hope was that the goats would never venture to the far end, away from the barn and the other animals.  But it didn't take into account that they would be escaping their pen on the far end, away from the barn and close to where my fence ended.  I'm sure that they just wandered out into the field and happened to find themselves on the garden side of the fence with nothing better to do than pillage.

We surveyed the damage.  As Lilo was leaving, she grabbed a mouthful of snow peas, so I knew that they had been hit.  But with almost 100 feet of peas, it was hard to see a difference.  Not the case with the carrots.  The goats had obviously walked up and down each row of carrots and ate the greens down to the earth.  The carrots were intact in the ground, but the were effectively picked as without tops they would not be growing any more.

The beets had been eaten too, but not as bad as the carrots.  And it looked like a couple of potato plants had been browsed to death.  One yukon and one red.  There were a few potatoes lying in the dirt, unaware that their leaves had been eaten.  I easily picked them up and added them to the forced harvest.

The boys helped to pull all of the carrots and beets out of the ground and we took them all inside.  I topped and tailed the larger carrots and bagged them in bunches of nine.  They should still be good by Thursday when I am supposed to fill my Locavore order.  The smaller carrots were topped, tailed, and cut into smaller pieces.  I then blanched them for three minutes and threw them in a baking dish in the freezer.  Once they have frozen individually, I will bag them up and vacuum seal them for the freezer.

I suppose it isn't a complete loss, but I will be dedicating all resources to making sure the goats cannot get out of their pen again.  If I cannot get it figured out tomorrow, they may be bunking with the pigs.  But I really don't want to punish the pigs for something they didn't do.  As a small deterrent, I will be running the oscillating sprinkler along the side of the garden that the goats entered...hopefully they will think twice about crossing the stream.