Taylorsville residents Chris and Rebecca Nixon wanted to fill the ¾-acre open patch of land next to their home with cantaloupe, corn, onions, pumpkins, tomatoes and marigolds. Trouble is, when they got the notion, the only things sprouting up were weeds and unwanted grass. 

“We’ve lived here (4917 S. 3600 West) 25 years or more and have always had a garden in this area,” Rebecca Nixon said. “But we’re both seniors now and keeping up with the weeds has gotten harder. We don’t want to use chemicals to kill them because we are thinking about raising bees out there someday. Pesticides aren’t good if you want to do that.”

What’s a budding Taylorsville farmer and potential beekeeper to do? Like everything this day in age, her answer was only a mouse click or two away – at goatsonthego.com. 

“NO GOATS, NO GLORY!” is the first thing you see on the website. Next, you’ll read, “You’re fighting the good fight against noxious weeds, brush and invasive plant species. Don’t surrender to the use of poisonous herbicides or CO2-spewing equipment. Stand your ground. Be a hero. GET GOATS.”

And that’s how Rebecca Nixon got hooked up with Kai Rasmussen – a bonified goat wrangler out of northeastern Utah, about three goat trailer hours away.

“Our 5-and-a-half-acre farm in Myton (40 miles this side of Vernal) has sheep, cows, horses, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, chickens, peacocks and one donkey,” Rasmussen said. “But what we have the most of are goats – about 240 of them now.” 

In 2021, Rasmussen and her husband, Derek Harris, launched her goat grazing business, “We Goat This.” She pays a fee to Goats on the Go to share in their national internet presence.

“Most of our jobs are in the Park City and Kamas areas,” Rasmussen said. “This was my first time to haul a trailer of our goats to Taylorsville. Since Rebecca only wanted ¾ of an acre cleared off, this was one of my smaller jobs. Our fees are based on the number of goats we bring and how long they stay. They range from fairly small, like this one, to very large jobs.”

Rasmussen’s oldest of six children, 14-year-old son Dayton, is her chief assistant. He helps with transporting the animals – and installing the temporary, electrical fence that holds the goats in place.

“The fences are all in one piece,” Rasmussen explained. “You just roll them out. They have netted squares and stakes every 12 feet. The fence is charged by a solar panel. We put lots of signs up to warn people to stay away from it. We’ve had teenagers jump into it on purpose. The fence carries enough jolt to keep them from doing it too many times.”

One section of electrified fence had to be installed right next to a sidewalk where younger kids walked to and from a nearby elementary school.

“I asked my grandson, Jacob Bentley, to help me keep an eye on the kids as they walked by,” Nixon said. “He was all into it. He and a friend even spent a few nights in a tent near the fence to keep an eye on things.”

One single, 24-foot goat trailer can comfortably transport 100 of the animals. For this trek, the goats enjoyed a little more leg room. Rasmussen and Dayton brought 78 of the animals to the Taylorsville garden patch and left them for a week.

“The goats did a great job – just what we wanted,” Nixon said. “They ate everything right down to the dirt, so it was ready for tilling and planting.”

Oh, and after running the grass and weeds through their internal factories, the eastern Utah goats also left a welcome byproduct.

“Goat poop is the best fertilizer there is,” Nixon said. “We were happy to have all of that, too.” λ