Green Fence Farm Cashmere Goats

Fine fiber for spinning, luxurious cashmere yarn

Click here for information on 2006 sales

First, I want to make it clear that the goats were Nick’s idea.  So the lack of information on this page – or the higher than usual percentage of made-up information on this page – is because HE is in charge of the research.  If you have any questions you really want answered on these creatures, call the man himself, 202-215-7868.

My only requirement was that the goats contribute some fiber to my developing fiber “problem” (yes, I do plan to sell it…soon, really soon…keep checking back).  Apparently, angora goats, the more common fiber choice, are scrawny and not tasty.  So we now own 20 Cashmeres, 18 does and 2 bucks.

Most, if not all, cashmere produced in the United States comes from recently feral goats from Spain or Australia.  Ours are from Australian lines.  And that they are only a few generations removed from life in the wild is quite evident whenever we have to run around the barnyard, Keystone Cop fashion, trying to catch one of them to do some unpleasant goat chore, such as ear tagging or hoof trimming.  Our carefully designed handling chutes – the ones that my well behaved (in comparison) sheep file though, if not noiselessly, at least with some degree of decorum – are mere annoyances to the goats, who can blow through them – and out into the neighbors’ field -- with just a few whacks of their horns.  But I digress…

Like the Icelandic sheep, the goats’ primitive heritage makes them hard to kill with our incompetence – and we are starting to specialize in such breeds at Green Fence Farm, incompetence (or, if I’m feeling positive, “our willingness to learn on the job”) being in ample supply.  We’re thinking about adopting that as a motto:  “Buy our breeding stock: If they survived us, they can survive anything!”

These goats also are fine eating goats, prized in the ethnic markets that surround the DC region.  And then there’s the fiber.  Each goat will grow a downy undercoat during the winter – 10 ounces at most of that soft stuff we usually find only at Nordstrom’s men department on the last minute panicked Christmas gift sweater table.  The furry gold is either combed out or shorn off in February, then de-haired (at a mill, nothing we are going to attempt at the farm, being that the machinery to do it doesn’t attach to Nick’s tractor, and that is our buying criterion).  We will have it further processed into roving for spinning or yarn (if you have a preference, by all means let me know at info@greenfencefarm.com).

The goats kid in March, and the babies fatten for 4 to 8 months, at which point they are sold for meat, sold as breeding stock, or kept for our own breeding purposes.  We welcome visitors to the farm in the spring, when the cute goats are gamboling among the wildflowers, so we can explain to your children that, if you parents don’t buy this goat from us now, he’ll have to take the long ride to Mr. Butcher.