I love this idea from Brighton Council, which is training local residents as shepherds to watch over grazing flocks. Why? Because it means it can do away with noisy, polluting petrol mowers and use the animals to cut the grass in the city’s parks and green spaces naturally.
Anyone who signs up to the scheme is given a one-day training course and sent out to watch over the animals an hour at a time.
As The Guardian reports:
[One volunteer] talks of the environmental benefits, pointing to the regrowth of chalk grassland flowers in the soon-to-be designated South Downs national park. Unlike a mower, which will cut indiscriminately through wildflowers and lizards alike, sheep graze selectively, with the uneven results that support grassy microclimates.
I wonder if we could convince our council to do something similar. I doubt it, but there is a nature reserve at the end of our road that they regularly mow with a noisy, smelly tractor-towed mower, and it would be great to be able to open the curtains in the morning and see sheep there instead.
I’d even volunteer to look after them myself, although the appeal would perhaps be somewhat dulled in the rain and the snow.
Check out the full story on The Guardian where you’ll find a link to sign up.
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