Natural Lawn Mowers Hard at Work at The Farm

Boys riding goats, ca 1918.

I’m so looking forward to our next visit to The Farm: Countdown to Aug. 12.

That’s a very long 25 days until I can see what my family’s new goats have managed to clear out of the orchard. From what I hear, they’ve been quite the little lawn mowers.

Spikey thistle and thorny wild rose bushes are no obstacle for these tenacious herbivores.

I’m told they’ve nearly cleared the old orchard, which had become quite the jungle.

Years ago, the orchard was filled with fruit trees. (We enjoyed the flavor from the last chips of the last apple tree during the pork roast to celebrate my sister’s graduation in May).

I’ve only seen slides of that part of The Farm, with its finely manicured lawn. The mowing back then was by sheep that my grandparents kept long before I was born.

My whole life, the orchard, at least most of it, has been a jungle of small brush, trees, and, if you knew where to find them, raspberries. Only my grandpa had the nerve to brave the chiggers to harvest them so my grandmother could magically transform them into jars of jam or pies. I tagged along a few times, long pants and long sleeves secured at the cuffs with rubber bands. [I still got chiggers, btw.]

I don’t know what the plans are for that part of The Farm. But I’m eager to see how the goats have transformed the landscape.


Note: Two years ago, I blogged about how Google had retained the services of a grazing business to clear some of its land.

Photo above from the State Library of Queensland, Australia, flickr photostream.