Portland Monthly
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By Rebecca Jacobson Photography by Michael Raines Published in the Spring 2025 issue of Portland Monthly
Image: Michael Raines
Keara Broadhead did not set out to be a goatherd. But back in 2020, staring down two acres on her McMinnville property absolutely overrun with Himalayan blackberry, she did what anyone in her situation would do: She found a woman on Craigslist who was aging out of the hoof-trimming and hay-throwing that her two goats, half brothers Finny and Meeko, required. Asking price for the pair was about $150, Broadhead recalls, so she and her father-in-law’s then-girlfriend (now wife) drove a horse trailer to the outskirts of Salem.
“She was very wary,” Broadhead says of the seller, “trying to make sure we were not purchasing them for meat.”
It was December, and Finny and Meeko were slow to start on the job they’d been brought in to do. (As a general rule, goats aren’t wild about the rain.) In June, Bambi, Flower, and Bubbles entered the herd, also via Craigslist. “As soon as we had our five, they just devastated the land, clearing it out extremely fast,” Broadhead says. “And then it was like, oh, wow. That was impressive.”
Image: Michael Raines
Now, however, there was a new problem: five hungry goats. Jeff Broadhead, Keara’s husband, suggested they sell. Keara balked. Which is how the Broadheads came to own 22 goats, who travel across the region—to backyards and city parks, golf courses and HOAs—mowing down unwanted vegetation. Incorporated in 2023 as Go Goat, the company is already booked for much of 2025, with work beginning at the end of March and not letting up till late fall. Many of the jobs are small backyards, which might run $500–600. But the goats this year will also head to the coast, where they’ll clear brush at Cape Lookout State Park, and to the tiny Columbia River town of Prescott, Oregon, which has hired the herd for wildfire prevention, a growing need across the increasingly parched western US.
Goats are a chemical-free alternative to pesticides, and there’s little they won’t eat.
The strategy—goatscaping, if you’ll allow it—isn’t new. In 2010, this very magazine published a story about rented ruminants dispatched to a vacant lot on SE Belmont Street. The practice endures for good reason. Goats are a chemical-free alternative to pesticides, and there’s little they won’t eat; beyond blackberry, they love English ivy and poison oak. They’re also experts on inclines that would be dangerous for machinery. At most sites, the Broadheads erect a temporary electric fence, plus a pop-up tent for shelter. They bring a stock tank and a hose, so other than access to water the goats want for nothing. Food, after all, is on the house.
Image: Michael Raines
When assembling work teams, the Broadheads have learned to consider bonded pairs (“There’s a few that we could never separate,” Keara says) and body size, because taller goats and smaller goats reach brush at different heights. They’ve involved their school-age kids, who feed the goats leftover apple slices and hand their dad zip-ties while he builds fences. On jobs, the goats are typically subdued. But at home in McMinnville, they’ve been known to perform backflips off trees—Jeff calls them “parkour maniacs”—and play what appears to be a game of tag with the llamas. Yes, llamas: Rain and Dewdrop are what Go Goat calls its guardian llamas, and they accompany the herd on jobs, making themselves big if coyotes or other predators approach.
Last fall, Miranda Gambetti and her husband hired Go Goat to clear a steep, overgrown acre behind their West Linn home. For about three weeks, a herd—nine to begin with, plus two who joined after wrapping up another job—munched its way through tangles of blackberries.
Gambetti was riveted. “The first thing I did in the morning is look outside my window, out of the bedroom,” she says. “Like, what are the goats doing? You could always see the llama. The llama is just huge.” A mental health therapist, Gambetti says the presence of the goats helped her find a mindful pause between meetings with clients. “They eat, and they chill,” she says. “I was a little envious.”
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