TIMELINE

2012-2013:

After those first three years, Creative Woodworking NW—whose shop stands directly across the street from the property, and who’d helped care for the rented herds—arranged to have their own goats. This new herd began in October of 2012 and grew as its owner found and bought additional animals in pairs from area farms. Unlike their predecessors, these goats would take up residence rather than be hired out to weed other property, something that remains true to this day.

This is the herd which both the Buckman neighbourhood and the greater Portland community came to know and love over the course of the Spring and Summer of 2013, becoming, in the words of one early supporter, the “nexus of an unexpected and spontaneous community”.

Late in October of 2013, after a year of uninterrupted residency, an approaching deadline to make way for a long-anticipated development project raised the possibility of the herd being split up. Instead, a handful of its
volunteer caretakers stepped up to purchase the herd in order to ensure that it remained intact, for the good of both the herd and the community— with the goal of finding a new, publicly-accessible home.

2013 - PRESENT:

While the herd no longer resides on SE Belmont Street, its new owners officially named them The Belmont Goats in recognition of the pioneering history of urban goats at Goat Field; in March of 2014 they formed a non-profit of that name.

Early in October of 2014, at the invitation of the neighbourhood and in an early partnership with Green Lents, The Belmont Goats conducted a successful crowd funding campaign and relocated to Lents Town Centre, onto land provided by the Portland Development Commission (now known as Proper Portland). In the middle of May of 2016, with a long-awaited redevelopment coming to its new neighbourhood, the herd relocated to another lot just two blocks away. The Belmont Goats will reside at their current location at SE 92nd & Harold until June of 2018.

CONTEXT OF BELMONT GOATS

Originally residing at what was known colloquially as Goat Field (or, to the local development community, “the goat blocks”), two city blocks bounded by SE Belmont and Taylor Streets and SE 11th and 10th Avenues, The Belmont Goats were preceded by three summers of unrelated herds rented from Goat Rental NW and Sauvie Island Goat Rental to clear brush.

Those rented herds came to the field as a suggestion to developer Killian Pacific by landscape architect Brett Milligan, whose other, secret agenda was the social experiment of what residents would think of goats living in the middle of the urban, partly-industrial Buckman neighborhood.

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROJECT

The engagement of the community in remediation projects is vital to their ongoing success. It allows a way for interested individuals to express their care and consideration for the place in which they live and gives an outlet for the concept of ‘Radical Hope’ mentioned in the introduction. The use of goats in this case acts as a catalyst for the project to connect with the community in a tangible way through being immediately and naturally drawn to the site to engage with the animals and then learn more about the job they are doing and the
significance to their community. The Power Plants team is hoping similar engagement is possible through the evolution of the floral display of garden 01 throughout the year.