Twitter world is aflutter: Google Rents Goats!
Official Google Blog: Mowing with goats.
This is old news to Californians, but we’re glad the rest of the world is interested. Goats are a good non-petroleum-fueled way to clear brush from fire-prone parks and open spaces. They fertilize, too!
One year when a son of mine attended a school in East Oakland, I was staggered to drive down the hill and see a phalanx of goats grazing in front of a Spanish-style church, part of an old college. The vista looked like Spain. In another block we were square in the middle of the ‘hood, with the liquor stores, the donut-tracks on the streets, the drug dealers, etc.
All our hills are goat-trimmed. The wildflowers in Redwood Park are gorgeous this year, and if you look closely you can see tiny dried-up pellets of goat turds strewn amongst the blossoms.
East Bay Regional parks also hire draft horses to log timber in steep areas where bobcats or big bulldozers would erode the hillsides.
This made me laugh out loud. When we lived in Ramallah we rented a corner lot that had very tall grass and no lawn mower. Every day I watched a neighbor go by with his herd of 30 or so goats and I had the bright idea of having them graze in our yard as a way to cut the grass. My husband arranged it with him.
But when they were done we ended up with some gnawed grass here and there and a yard full of goat poop!
We still laugh about it to this day.
Posted by: Judy | May 03, 2009 at 06:00 AM