These Goats Fight Wildfires — Adorably

When the mortgage business melted down in 2008, it knocked a big hole in our retirement. I’d spent 15 years working as a mortgage officer, and there I was at 50, sitting at my desk with nothing to do, my eyelids twitching from the stress. I came across an article online about ranchers getting paid to graze goats as a way to mitigate fire risk, and I thought, I could do that. I’d grown up on a ranch here in Red Bluff, [California], and we raised cattle and hogs, so I was returning to my roots.

Still, my wife, Jody, was quite concerned that I wanted to raise goats for a living. She said I could have five. I came home with 10. When the first baby came, Jody was hooked.

Today we have over 4,000 goats. Every day there’s something different. You’re doctoring livestock one day. The next, you’re training your dogs or handling predator issues.

We’ll graze for municipalities, the Forest Service, utilities and HOAs. We graze a buffer between the wildland-urban interface and the homes. When you have wild grasses that are knee-high and the north winds are blowing, the fire just jumps. Our goats mow it all down to about 2 inches, and when a fire hits that, it begins to crawl rather than leap.

When I was growing up, a fire was maybe 500 or 1,000 acres, and that was a big fire. Now they’re lucky if they can keep them under 50,000 acres. There aren’t enough firefighters in California to save all our homes and property. There’s not enough water or trucks or airplanes.

I enjoy being out in the hills, connected to the livestock, the ground, the community, providing a service. There’s just something about watching animals graze — the contentment of their routine. They go out early, they graze, they fill up, they lie down, chew their cud and rest. It’s kind of meditative. It rebuilds your spirit and you’re ready to go again tomorrow.

The world is so busy, so noisy. That “always on” thing, it’s a problem. We need time to reflect. Some people find it on the golf course. I find it out here.

Tim Arrowsmith, 65, owns Western Grazers, a brush-cutting service in Northern California.