If you don’t already know about NoFence, first go and check out our previous blog post here.

On March 14, 2025 members of the Restoravore community enjoyed meeting with several Norwegian and U.S. representatives from the NoFence Virtual Fencing company. 

It was a beautiful Spring day as we gathered at the Richards farm. We had one of those early days in the season where you really appreciate the increasing intensity of the sunlight and consciously orient your body to absorb as much of it as possible. Three of our yaks and several goats were casually sporting their NoFence GPS collars, totally unaware that our discussions would focus almost entirely on them. After some personal introductions (which included the company CEO and Chief of Marketing) and after enjoying some scones and coffee, everyone went around and shared their respective journeys and experiences with restorative grazing. We then shared our experiences with NoFence’s cool new virtual fencing technology, swapping our own stories with those accumulated from other users around the world. 

For the past two years we have had the opportunity to participate in the US trials of NoFence collars on our own goats and yaks. There has been much for us to learn, not only about the products themselves, but also their effectiveness within our cellular network system in the USA, their capabilities within our deeply dissected landscape, and even about general animal psychology during training and use of the collars. Many tips and tricks have been discovered in the past few seasons that are now being incorporated into standard practice. Meanwhile, the programming and technology continues to make great strides each year.

Aside from some not-so-unexpected growing pains within the industry, and a few lessons learned through the US expansion process, the future is looking incredibly bright for this technology. It was exciting to be speaking in person with executives from this Norway-based company. In spite of the distances between our respective homes, the practical similarities between the rugged terrain in Norway, and our own driftless landscape were quite apparent.

One common tone throughout our conversation was the humming excitement that this technology is opening up so many possibilities for better utilization and healing of marginal and degraded landscapes. Obviously, this is a huge priority within our own work here at home and something we are pushing to see adopted on a broad scale within our local watershed. We no longer need to see such a strong distinction between intensively managed lands and totally neglected ones. With virtual containment, the task of reinvigorating dysfunctional ecosystems is becoming significantly more simple. 

There was a strong undercurrent of shared purpose and collaboration throughout our time together on the Richards farm and, after giving the yaks and goats some much appreciated attention, we decided to extend our morning a bit by enjoying some lunch together at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse. Before we went our separate ways, we ate some good food and brainstormed ideas for the future, even expressing our hopes that Restoravore may someday be able to visit one or more of the NoFence farms in Norway.

We extend our thanks to the NoFence delegation for making the trip and setting aside the time to meet with us, and to the Richards for hosting us all at their farm. Here’s to continued deepening of our friendships and to many more years of collaboration ahead!

By the way, if you are interested in purchasing some NoFence collars for your own animals, get in touch with us via info@restoravore.org. We can offer a referral discount! To find out more about NoFence’s virtual fencing system, visit their website here.