City Goats: The Goat Justice League's Guide to Backyard Goat Keeping

Time Magazine calls author Jennie Grant the, "godmother of goat lovers."

Jennie Grant is your average 40-something mother with a bungalow in Seattle's leafy Madrona neighborhood, a happy middle-school child, a tolerant husband, and a pug named Eddie. She also happens to keep chickens and two milking goats, Snowflake and Eloise, and is regionally known as the passionate founder of the Goat Justice League.

Since Grant began keeping milking goats several years ago, she has learned firsthand the remarkable benefits and beauty of keeping goats -- how much healthier and easier to maintain a yard with goats can be, the tolerance levels of neighbors, the health benefits of non-industrial foods, and how interacting with goats inspires a connection with nature. City Goats: The Goat Justice League's Guide to Urban Goat Keeping is her step-by-step guide to raising a pair of dairy goats in your urban or suburban backyard, from learning city zoning requirements and selecting goats to setting up your yard, building a goat shed, feeding and caring, kidding, and milking.

Practical and at times comical (just like a goat!), connected both to nature and the city, and slightly rebellious -- City Goats: The Goat Justice League's Guide to Urban Goat Keeping is a book for gardeners, people committed to eating locally, and anyone who has ever pondered joining the backyard goat revolution.

Jennie Grant is a stay-at-home mother who also makes a living writing newsletters and publicity materials for Seattle real estate agents. She is better known locally, however, as the founder and president of the Goat Justice League, a citizen action group that worked with the Seattle City Council to legalize goats in the city in 2007. Today, Seattle allows it's residents to keep up to three mini-goats, as long as they are neutered and de-horned. City Council president Richard Conlin has one of Jennie's goats that is named after him.

Jennie also is involved with Seattle Tilth and is one of its backyard goat keeping class teachers. She herself is an avid gardener; in addition to goats and chickens, her 4000-square-foot city lot includes a large vegetable garden, a big strawberry patch, and about 10,000 or so Italian honey bees (some of whom she has not yet named).

In the past year, Jennie began working towards a nursing degree, which she will complete in 2012. This has reaffirmed who belief in the healthfulness of backyard goat's milk. She has been profiled in the Seattle Times, as well as in fellow Skipstone title, The Urban Farm Handbook, by Annette Cottrell and Joshua McNichols.