Thanks guys for the information. oldtimer I'm not quitting with the composting, it just won't be a pretty compost pile like some of the photos I see in this site. If I decide to house a small goat, I have a larger dog kennel that I intend to keep it when it is not outside "working" eradicating the poison oak, poison ivy and, yes, we have poison sumac too, the goat will have to stay in the dog kennel. I will be outside to make sure the goat is safe for we have seen coyatoes walk through the yard. The goat will be borrowed just for the purpose of a safe way to get rid of the poison mess. Kimmsr, I went to fire ant control site and realized that we need to fight the ants in the fall, probably all year in North Ga area. The fire ants were here when we brought the property, which surprised me for it was a vacant hill top property, but the previous owners had a tomato garden up here. I suppose the ants could have been brought in to the area in tomato plants? Anyway, thanks guys, and I will be careful when fighting the poisons out there. I have to suit up to work in the yard, complete with long sleeves, long pants with my socks over the top of the pant legs. Plus, of course gloves. Reason: Ants love me, they seem to track me down, plus I'm sensitive to poison sumac and hubby is very sensitive to the other two. The socks pulled over the top of the pant legs is to ensure no ants crawl into my clothing. We have mean fire ants in GA.

I realize it's now been a several years and this (my) post will probably not help in the decision making process of the original poster. I, for one, wouldn't mind hearing an update. Regarding “the PI would taint whatever milk was produced anyway so that's probably not a key factor in our search", I don't know this for a fact but my experience, research and hunch is that, to the contrary, it might possibly prove beneficial helping to, somewhat, inoculate those who drink the milk against the effects of poison ivy. I do know that other inoculation methods (which I won't going to detail about here) do work.

Oof...feel for ya with the house gutting...we didn't have to do that, but have quite a few projects with the outbuildings. My current pile of fence posts is growing by the day, as I've spent the last couple weeks clearing out the young trees from areas I'm hoping to be calling "fields" by summer. Soil's black and beautiful, but rocky. It's actually a lot of fun pushing over trees with the tractor :). I'm also going to try out some hedge fencing too, since there's a lot of willow here that also has to come down, and if next year's moist enough they should root themselves in when we "plant" them as posts. I might try something similar with the cypress as well. The goats are doing an amazing job clearing up the vines and roses... it's truly amazing how much they get done each day. We're using a portable electric-mesh fence to block out the worst spots for them (places you can't even see across, much less walk through), then move them 3 or 4 days later to tractor out whatever's left. I'm going to try to post up some photos over the weekend.

I just want to give an update on my poison ivy. After due deliberation and much consideration I decided I could carefully target just the poison ivy leaves with an Ortho poison ivy killer without it getting into the ground. I began with a small area first and waited to see what would happen. At first I thought perhaps it had no effect at all, but then a few weeks later I noticed that tiny patch I'd sprayed was brown and dead. So I sprayed the rest. It took a lot of patience and a couple of rounds to get it all and is a slow process just as daninthedirt said, but it looks as though it has finally succeeded! So my next step will be removing that patch of dirt and hopefully removing any roots with it and then bring in some fresh dirt. I figure that's the best way to assure I'm removing as much poison residue in the soil as possible. I'll wait awhile before doing this step to give the poison a chance to complete its job on that root system. I, of course did these courses of poison during long stretches of dry weather so it didn't wash off the leaves. Next time this problem arises I'm going to try the vinegar recipe method for comparison. Thanks for all the help and good advice!