Our goats will soon return full time to Great River in their newly secure enclosure! Our goats have spent the past year living their best lives on a beautiful organic farm, Dancing the Land Farm, where they've been able to enjoy large open spaces, fodder and forage and a few stolen CSA vegetables, and the company of an entire herd of Angora and milking goats.

Over that same year, our goat team has re-evaluated our entire upper garden and adjacent outdoor spaces in terms of goat safety and longer term goals for our animal program and program development; evaluated and come to an agreement to relocate the main goat pen to the front and center area of the school; worked with numerous stakeholders and our building company to verify that we can in fact make all of the necessary changes; worked the site to design, reshape and fence the existing infrastructure with the complex needs of a school and urban setting alongside the needs for additional security and everyday goat care necessities; and finally, this week our hand-built custom goat barn arrived for a community barn-raising and additional interior security fencing. We expect these final steps to be accomplished in the next week or two at most.

In school, 7/8 students will continue their work on improving the goat barn and goat pen infrastructure throughout the fall and beyond. As soon as our barn and inner security fence are fully operational, the goats will return full-time to the GRS campus and their beloved roles in our urban community.

For information about upcoming work days, email Lisa at lholt@greatriverschool.org