Story

Considering your questions, I realize I had taken on the care of a property that I believed was best run as a hobby farm, rather then a domestic home; however, I initially just followed the practices of the previous owners who had mowed most of it for domestic use for the previous several decades; once installed, the goats were amazing at keeping the lawns looking great. Around here, I think one goat could easily tend 0.5-1 acre without too much trouble. The property was in an agricultural district, agriculturally zoned, with lots of both rain and sun, however; so as you say, absolutely not the circumstances presented to many Californians. I lived in Pasadena, California while doing my post-doc and spent the first six months of my time there marvelling how weird it was to feel like you were in a desert, yet seeing lush green in most places -- people appeared to spend a lot more time, money, water making vegetation grow there, then trying to keep grass cut.

* How big is a lawn that takes 6+ hours to mow? ~3-4 acres, used a ride-on mower for the "first pass" which would take ca. 4 hours, the extra hours came from using push mowers and whipper snippers to clean up the parts closest to the road, etc; the lawn would need to be mowed once per week on average lest the grass get too long to mow the next time round
* How many goats does that support? After 1 year of the above and basically spending the majority of my free time mowing, I installed 2-4 goats on 2+ acres to keep the grass like a meadow.
* What kind of weather do you have that you can support goats on your property? lots of rain and warm sun; the grass grows fast most weeks of the summer (3-5 months)
* Where do you live that that's allowed? eastern Canada, rural
* What do you do about the plants you don't want the goats to eat (veggie bed, flowers, etc)? fenced them off or let things play out as the did; in most cases, the lawns/fields had pre-existing apple, plum, peach, cherry trees, etc. with leaves too high for the goats to kill and the drops which added to their food supply and their "cleaning" role.
* How much does it cost/goat (vet, whatever else goats need)? I can't remember the details; I would pay on the order of $20-$100 per goat at the start of summer; I bought male goats that I would butcher and eat in the fall; startup expenses were fencing and a shelter for the goats, but I don't recall much other expenses otherwise (salt blocks for the goats?)