Did you know that goats used to roam central park? It seems that Back in 1864, famed Central Park landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were going for a bucolic English countryside look when they imported 200 sheep to graze on a lush 15-acre pasture, giving birth to the park's Sheep Meadow. There, the herbivores trimmed, frolicked, and fertilized. Some 80 years later, it's still a good idea, so why don't we do it?
The folks at Yahoo, Google, and the Vanderbilt Mansion, a national historic site in New Hyde Park, NY, have hired goats to tame their expanses in a way that uses fewer toxins and machinery. As Christina Page, Yahoo's director of Climate and Energy Strategy, told Treehugger in June, "We opted for a creative -- and greener -- alternative to spraying the weeds with pesticides."
What a wonderful and simple idea! I guess you would have to check with your neighbors. But there have been a few companies that 'rent' goats to help tame you lawn (you can visit a website called 'goatfinder' to see if there is anyone participating near you or just go and ask your neighborhood farm if you can borrow their goats. I think this is just one of the most obvious ideas I have heard in a long time.
And getting back to NYC's Central Park, did you know that Tavern on the Green was the 'goat barn'... I think it was put to MUCH better use as a barn than a tourist destination, right?!
read more here in a Wall Street Journal's article
