Kendall County Junior Livestock Show: HOA Fines Goat, Then Hires It
Boerne Homeowners Association Sends a Market Goat Eleven Violation Notices, Then Discovers It Cannot Live Without Him
BOERNE, Texas — The Architectural Review Committee of a gated subdivision off Interstate 10 has closed a seven-month dispute involving a 14-year-old Boerne 4-H member, a 92-pound Boer wether named Escrow, and a deed restriction the committee chairman now describes as “clearly drafted by people who had never been introduced to a goat.”
The file, which Farm.FM obtained from the resident who takes the committee’s minutes, runs to 63 pages. It opens with a polite letter and closes with a grazing lease. In between is what happens when the oldest Kendall County and the newest one share a fence line.
Kendall County Has More Goats Than Cattle, and One More Than the Enclave Wanted
The subdivision, which the file refers to as The Enclave at Saddle Bluff, sits on what used to be a ranch. The 2022 Census of Agriculture found the county had lost roughly a third of its farmland acreage in five years, much of it to rooftops climbing I-10 from San Antonio.
What the county has not lost is goats. The same census counted 14,212 goats in Kendall County, against 13,015 cattle and a frankly lonely 360 hogs. The chairman, who moved to Boerne two years ago, called this “the most alarming thing anyone has told me since the closing.” The exhibitor told Farm.FM she learned it in third grade.
The Notices, Numbered
Notice No. 1 cited “an unapproved exterior element, animate.” It referred to Section 7.4(b) of the covenants, which bans “livestock other than customary household pets.” The exhibitor replied within the 10-day cure period, enclosing a letter from her ag teacher stating that Escrow was customary, lived at the household, and was “more of a pet than the koi.”
Notice No. 2 asked her to submit Escrow for exterior color review. The approved palette for the Enclave consists of Hill Country Limestone, Pecan Shell, and Sage Whisper. Escrow has a white body and a red head. The body passed as Limestone. The head went to a vote.
The exhibitor held a paint chip beside the goat’s ear for eleven minutes. The committee ruled, 3-2, that the head was “Pecan Shell adjacent” and therefore permitted “on a provisional basis pending seasonal fading.”
Notice No. 4 concerned noise. The chairman measured Escrow’s bleat from his patio at 71 decibels. The leaf-blower crew measured 94 the next morning. Both matters were tabled.
Notice No. 6 cited Escrow for exceeding the eight-foot maximum height for accessory structures, after he was photographed on a dog house on a picnic table. The exhibitor did not contest it. She moved the picnic table.
Notice No. 7 cited Escrow for eating Notice No. 6. The committee ruled that consumption of a notice constitutes acknowledgment of receipt. Escrow has since acknowledged four more. He has never once acknowledged receipt of a hay bill.
Notice No. 9 required that “all exterior mechanical equipment visible from the street,” including Escrow’s box fan, be screened. The exhibitor built a three-panel cedar screen in ag mechanics, stained it Sage Whisper, and entered it in the show’s woodworking division. It received a ribbon. The committee received a photograph of the ribbon.
The Greenbelt Problem
The file turns on page 38, where the treasurer reports a letter about the subdivision’s 40-acre greenbelt. The developer had kept it grazed with a borrowed herd to hold its agricultural standing, and the herd had left in the spring. The letter suggested, gently, that if no agriculture resumed there, a much larger number would resume on everyone’s tax bill.
The minutes then record, in capitals: WHAT LIVESTOCK DO WE HAVE INSIDE THE GATE. The answer had a red head and four outstanding notices.
The exhibitor arrived at a special session with her ag teacher and a draft agreement prepared with help from her club leader and the Kendall County AgriLife Extension office, where a staff member said questions like this now arrive “more than you’d think, and from further inside the gates every year.”
Her terms were: a per-head monthly grazing fee; water and a gate code; a 4-foot opening in the back fence; and the withdrawal of all eleven notices, “including the ones Escrow ate.” The committee asked for a night to think. She gave them until 9 p.m., it being a school night.
Show Week at the Kendall County Junior Livestock Show and Sale
The Kendall County Junior Livestock Show runs the first full week of January at the Kendall County Youth Agriculture and Equestrian Center near Comfort, with goats and lambs on Thursday and the sale Saturday at 12:30 p.m. About 400 Kendall County kids take part through Boerne 4-H and the school FFA chapters, and the prizes are ribbons, belt buckles, and blankets.
The full committee attended Thursday. Escrow placed second in his class. The judge said the exhibitor “knew where her goat’s feet were at all times, which is more than I can say for the adults in this barn.”
That evening the chairman volunteered to help the board member who assembles the seven-page sale list. According to the Boerne Star, that board member once got home at 2 a.m. and called it an improvement. With the chairman adding a two-stage review and a comment period, the list was completed at 4:10 a.m. The board member described it as “the first year we’ve gone backwards.”
The Sale, and the Fine Print
The kids call sale day their “Santa” visit, and every seller goes home with at least $500 toward college. Escrow sold Saturday afternoon. The exhibitor did not cry. Her ag teacher did that for both of them, into a new blanket.
The committee also cried, because market goats go to market, and its entire agricultural program had just left in somebody else’s trailer.
The exhibitor then directed them to Clause 3 of the lease they had signed in December. It does not mention Escrow. It provides for “not fewer than three goats, supplied by Lessor, of Lessor’s choosing, at the rate stated, with annual escalation.” Lessor has already bought three Boer does. She is 14 and has informed the committee that she will be paying her own HOA dues going forward.
The file’s final page is Notice No. 12. It is addressed to the chairman himself, citing a 16-foot livestock trailer parked in his driveway beyond the 48-hour limit. He bought it in February. He says it is “for helping,” and that he has “no interest whatsoever” in the doeling he has been visiting at a breeder in Sisterdale.
The notice passed 4-1. The chairman voted against it, then paid it, then asked whether Pecan Shell came in a darker shade.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- Kendall County has 14,212 goats and 360 hogs. A man moved there and was shocked by a goat. That’s like moving to Galveston and filing a complaint about the sand.
- The committee ruled that a goat eating a notice counts as receipt. By that standard, Escrow has signed more paperwork than the whole board, and he did it faster.
- Seven pages of sale list used to get done by 2 a.m. One HOA chairman with a comment period got it to 4:10. One board member will now flinch at the word “stakeholder” for life.
- They made her build a fan screen and she won a ribbon with it. That’s 4-H. They hand you a citation, you hand back a ribbon and a bill for the stain.
- The chairman bought a trailer, visits a doeling in Sisterdale, and says it’s just for helping. Every Hill Country rancher alive has said that, usually about a third horse.