San Francisco has been using goats to trim airport undergrowth for years. Atlanta recently started a similar program. Now Chicago plans to start kidding around.
The Windy City is looking for 30 goats accompanied by a goat herder. A rough patch of grass and weeds in a hard-to-mow area at O’Hare International Airport needs to be kept cultivated. The Chicago Department of Aviation recently put out a bid for some one – and their goats – interested participating in a pilot program.
WFLD-TV reports Amy Malick is the department’s point person for sustainability. She says the area is outside the security fence, so there’s no danger of goats straying onto the runways. Malick also points out that goats don’t pollute like mechanical power mowers, or Grass Length Reduction Devices as they are known to the environmentally pure.
Ms. Malick may have a point. Gas engine lawnmowers are notoriously noisy. It is not for nothing that commercial operators, ‘lawn jockeys,’ are encouraged to wear ear protection. Their machines rack up 90 decibels. Over eight hours a day at 85 db results in permanent hearing damage. For comparison one of O’Hare’s jet planes taking off creates 120 db. What exposure such as this might do to goat herders and their charges has not been determined.
It gets worse: According to Statistics Canada, in just one season, the average gas-powered lawn mower emits the same amount of pollution as a car driven 500 kilometres. And don’t even ask the serious accidents caused annually by the machines.
Using goats to overcome these problems is hardly new, although sheep may have been first to be put out to grass.
The 9-hole golf course at 'Skylands,' the estate of Francis Lynde Stetson, lawyer to J. P. Morgan, had its grass kept trim by Mrs. Stetson's flock of Shropshire sheep. The 1,000-acre estate was established commencing 1891 and had 28 miles of scenic carriage roads. In 1984 it became the New Jersey Botanical Gardens.
A century later, the Interim Waste Treatment Plant in Mount Laurel, New Jersey was maintaining that state’s tradition with two young ewes named – wait for it – Lamb and Chop.
More recently, the Boston suburb of Andover has been experimenting with a half-dozen dairy goats allowed to graze on an overgrown public meadow. The goats can clear as much as half an acre every three days at no cost to taxpayers.
In Ontario, the Settlers’ Ghost Golf Course near Barrie has put a pair of young goats to work keeping the fairways manicured – to the interest of golfers. Once again there must be something that such causes people to name the critters: in this case it’s Whipper and Snipper.
Across the Atlantic things are also looking sheepish. According to the
Daily Mail, sheep have been allowed by the local farmer to graze among the flats and houses in the quiet village of Matson in Gloucestershire. Three years ago though,
The Daily Telegraph reported an alternative option. “Gardeners in Britain are increasingly turn to wallabies to trim their lawns,” the newspaper claimed. Thankfully, no one suggested cows for the job, which surely would have given rise to cracks about “lawn-mooers.”
Alas, this would appear to negate the advice of Louis Riotte. In her 1990 book
Astrological Gardening: The Ancient Wisdom of Successful Planting & Harvesting by the Stars (Garden Way) she advises that well maintained lawns are ruled by Venus and to mow in the third or fourth quarter under Leo, Virgo or Gemini to # growth. Power machinery is under first Uranus, second Mars; push mowers are ruled by Mercury. Not a word about goats or sheep.
Could it be we’re seeing the start of a trend? “Since the pesticide ban by Ontario’s Liberal government in 2009, parks, schoolyards and boulevards have turned into weed havens,” recently claimed Paul Chiral, president of Landscape Ontario trade group. But let’s face it, not everyone is enthused about lawns or their care. As long ago as 1936, Chinese observer Tung Chu-in expressed his opinion that, “While no doubt pleasing to a cow, a lawn can hardly engage the intellect of human beings.”
Perhaps not, but urban greenies who, like Paul Chiral, love their lawns may want to think again about hiring professionals with their noisy, polluting gas-powered mowers. Possibly we will soon encounter small herds of sheep or goats being driven from lawn to lawn along urban streets. Horticultural colleges will be called upon to conduct courses for shepherds and herders, putting a whole new meaning to the term ‘hoofer.’ An entire alternative industry could spring up to support these self-propelled, self-fueling four legged grass and weed trimmers.
As David Andres, Deal Sod Farms, said marketing the official grass and sod of the New York Yankees: “It is something that is green. It is something that is connected to America’s pastime. It is something affordable. And it is something that every fan can appreciate.”
