Our Story

What’s With All Of These Goats, Anyway?

It All Started With A Fire

It should not shock you to hear that the founder of Wildfire Goats is, in fact, a goat farmer. He and his family have been building a small family farm featuring Nubian dairy goats in a small Oregon town named Estacada. It’s been an ongoing process, and along the way they discovered something very interesting: homeowners will pay to have goats clean up areas on their property that are overgrown and otherwise resistant to traditional clearing methods like mowing. As small farmers tend to be very happy to find additional revenue streams they jumped into the business whole heartedly and have been providing brush clearing services using goats for the better part of a decade.

Back in September of 2020, much of Oregon was threatened by wildfires whose growth was driven by unusually hot and dry conditions combined with strong winds that aided in their spread. One of these, the Riverside fire, swept down the Clackamas River valley directly towards Estacada. Residents had about 24 hours of warning before the Level 1 evacuation warning was raised to a Level 3: Go! Our founder and his family had never been faced with something like this before and so they sprang into action packing up as best they could, but with one burning question unaddressed: to where can you evacuate a farm with 6 people, 2 dogs, 4 cats, and 75 goats? Fortunately, due to the overwhelming generosity of some total strangers in the neighboring town of Sandy, OR, their problem was solved. See for yourself:

Fortunately, the fire stopped just short of the Estacada city limit and within ten days our founder’s family and farm had returned home. For years after he wondered exactly what had happened, and, even more importantly: how could he have helped? The months turned to years and life on the farm returned to normal. Always in the back of his mind, though, was the overwhelming desire to find a way to try to help prevent anyone else from having to endure the loss of their homes. He could take his brush clearing team out and do fuels reduction work as many other organizations do, but he could only protect a small number of homes each year. Nothing jelled; after all, he was just one guy with a herd of goats- how much could he do alone?

Then, in late 2023, our founder was goofing around on YouTube and ran into this song by an Estacada artist. If you aren’t a fan of country music feel free to skip to 2:38 where the most important part is:

That was it!! He didn’t have to do everything himself. He was willing to bet that in every small town along the wildland-urban interface there would be people who would be willing to stand up and defend their homes and communities against wildfires. He also knew that there were a lot of goats in Oregon. Putting the two together, he concluded that odds were good that there was at least one person with enough goats in any given small town in Oregon that someone would be willing and able to step up and create another small town fight. He could recruit, train, and support as many of these teams as were needed in order to make a big dent in the fuels reduction problem. And through an odd set of circumstances, his skillset encompassed almost everything he’d need to get started. He just needed one more thing to get started- a name. It didn’t take long at all to come up with something simple and straightforward: Wildfire Goats.

Contact

31035 SE Currin Rd., Estacada OR 97023

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