“A day in the country is worth a month in town”Christina Rossetti

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Working Goats

 I hope there will come a time when using sheep or goats for landscaping our home lawns and woods is a norm. Those of you who followed On the Pond Farm eight years ago and more, know how effectively the goats could cut a straight line in the field or on the pond hill.

The fear for people who haven't had the up close experience, including one of my old neighbors, is smell. At least for goats, unless you have a breeding age buck (intact mature male), the smell you will find is in a dirty barn. Grazing and "fertilizing" on pasture, or in my suggested case, on a lawn, spreads the wealth and there is little to no smell. You don't believe me? That's okay, but when your neighbors decide to give goat landscaping a try, wait to judge. 

This week an old Ligonier friend posted this WSJ article and I'm glad to see the positive comments within the article. But best of all the good news to one neighborhood in California.

Well-Employed in Pandemic Times: Landscaping Goats - WSJ

"And they leave no cut grass behind. He credits their appetite with saving his neighborhood from a 2018 blaze called the Woolsey fire, which destroyed more than 1,500 buildings on 97,000 acres and took several lives. Mr. Gerstel said the flames reached the edge of the area the goats had grazed on, then stopped."

Sheep grazed on the White House lawn in 1919.

PHOTO: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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