Drag and Drop Website BuilderThe Great Recession: We were just getting into a promising position with our newly established hearth business (woodstoves, fireplaces, etc.) when everything started to crash. We had built a very unique hearth shop featuring the highest efficiency hearth products from select manufacturers from all over the globe. We handled 22 major lines, and many products from other supporting manufacturers.
This approach sat well with us and our values, but it went against all conventional wisdom for good retail and service management practices. It is not commonly known, but many hearth shops really have just one manufacturer. Many brands, but from one source. If fact, we worked for years for the worlds largest hearth manufacturer and they have so many brand names and products under one umbrella that it's staggering.
Basically there was a double hit. Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented demand for hearth products, especially wood and pellet stoves. As a small retailer who cherry picked from each manufacturer, we were literally last on every list to receive products. So we went though challenging times with not near enough product to install for our customers. Many customers waited for our high-efficiency products, but shortly after products started coming back in, people were getting pink slip notices and laid off their jobs. We had the units on order and had no other destination for the products. We installed over $100,000 worth of products that we never ended up receiving payment for. As a business just getting on our feet, this was the beginning of the end.
Thinking things would turn around for us and for our customers (who would then pay us) we started working multiple other jobs. The short version is, there was non-working lawn equipment with no funds to repair, no funds to fuel the equipment if the equipment ran and no time to use the equipment. With as many as seven jobs happening at one time, vegetation around our property grew up and became overgrown very quickly.
We got a few goats thinking we could tie them up and move them around to clear our overgrown property, as there was no time or money to mow in a traditional way.
We quickly discovered that goats do NOT belong on a lead or tie-outs if there is anything more than just grass or if there are any obstacles, like saplings. They tangle themselves around every and anything that you can imagine. We then discovered that traditional goat fence does not contain goats AT ALL if you are "pushing" the goats to any degree to actually clear vegetation. Goats do not like to (and in many cases, should not) eat close to the ground.
If it wasn't for the discovery of (and the correct, real information about) electric net fencing, we would have NEVER kept goats! With electric net fencing any and everywhere can be pasture/browse for goats and other livestock. The fenced animals can be tightly managed for the best vegetation and land utilization AND are protected from predators and parasites.
When we began to fully realize just how powerful a tool managed goats can be we *thought* that we had the first idea to use our goats to work for other people. Little did we know at that time that goats had been used for YEARS in this country to manage vegetation and land. And really, for centuries around the world is the heritage for goats, sheep and other livestock in managing our environments.
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