Goats, Cedar, and the Sixth Principle of Soil Health: A Lesson from Clinton Rasmusson
- Buz Kloot, Ph.D.
- Apr 21
- 3 min read
By: the Growing Resilience Team
I’ve long been a champion of the five principles of soil health — things like keeping the soil covered, minimizing disturbance, maintaining living roots, promoting diversity, and integrating livestock. These ideas have shaped my work and my conversations with farmers across the country.
But it wasn’t until I interviewed Clinton Rasmusson out in White River, South Dakota, that the sixth principle — context — really hit home for me.
Context means you don’t take a prescription and apply it blindly. It means you read the landscape. You learn its history. You listen to its limitations. And you recognize its possibilities.
When Cattle Aren’t Enough
I’ve always pictured livestock integration — the fifth principle — as cattle on cornstalks or cattle on cover crops. That’s been the mental model in my mind’s eye.
But as I listened to Clinton describe what has happened in his part of the world — the slow, steady march of eastern red cedar across once-open grasslands — I realized that model doesn’t always fit.
Eastern red cedar, sometimes called the “Green Glacier,” is swallowing up parts of South Dakota’s prairies. It shades out grass. It hogs water. It fills up pastures with dense, scratchy thickets. And in Clinton’s case, it makes a springtime search for calves in rough country a full-contact sport.
Clinton’s words stuck with me: “I was crawling through that crap, trying to tag calves with pissed-off mamas.”
This is no place for a cowboy on horseback to manage a hundred cows. This is a place that needs a different tool.
Goats Fit the Context
Clinton’s tool of choice? Spanish goats.
He didn’t start out with a grand vision. Like most good ideas, it grew from experience. A neighbor convinced him to buy ten goats just to try them out. Soon enough, he had 60 head — tough, scrappy animals that thrive on the very plants cattle won’t touch.
Cedar. Yucca. Skunkbush sumac. Goats go after all of it.
“They strip everything,” Clinton told me. “Stuff you couldn’t walk through — after a week with the goats, I could get in and out no problem.”
The lightbulb went on for me: this is livestock integration in context.
Not every place is cattle country anymore — not after years of cedar encroachment. And if we’re serious about regenerating these landscapes, we need to integrate the right kind of livestock for the job.
Sometimes that means cows. Sometimes it means sheep. And sometimes it means goats.
Beyond Brush Control — Toward Land Healing
Of course, Clinton isn’t just running goats for weed control. He’s also building a business — marketing goats into a growing demand for goat meat, especially among immigrant populations across the Midwest.
But what strikes me most is that Clinton is doing something powerful for the land itself.
Goats are buying him time — time before fire rips through cedar-choked draws, time before the brush takes over completely, time to heal and restore a landscape that once fed cattle and now feeds trees.
And they’re doing it on rough country where machinery can’t reach, where chemical spraying isn’t practical, and where prescribed burning is often risky.
It’s a labor-intensive way of working. It takes fencing. It takes dogs. It takes daily checking. But it works. And it works because it fits the context.
What This Means for Me — And Maybe for You
For a long time, I resisted adding the sixth principle of soil health — context — to the list. I liked the simplicity of five. But after talking with Clinton, I’ve changed my mind.
Context belongs there. And it belongs in our conversations with farmers and ranchers.
If you’re farming in corn country, cattle on cover crops might be your best bet. If you’re on prairie that’s been overtaken by cedar and brush, maybe goats — or sheep — are your ticket to healing the land.
The principle stays the same: livestock integration.
But the practice changes — because the land changes.
And if we’re paying attention — really paying attention — we’ll change with it.
Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages:
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2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture.
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4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com
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