My arrangement with the landowners who host my sheep is pretty simple:  I need more green things for my flock to eat, and people around town have fields that need to be kept from reverting to forest.  When the balance is right, I get free forage for my animals, and the landowners get free mowing.*  The small catch is that sheep mow differently than machines do — they can reach places that would be inaccessible to mowing tractors, but they are a little more selective, leaving woody stems and unpalatable plants unmowed.  I wanted to make sure that people used to seeing a neatly mowed field weren’t disappointed with the services of my sheep, so I figured I should do a quick mechanical clip of the fields after my sheep finish grazing.

This field was full of waist-high goldenrod when we started, and though the sheep stripped the leaves, they left the woody stems and the flower heads.  Things look a little neater after I’ve gone through.

The new flail mower seems to be working.

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*Lately I’ve been thinking about the exchange rate for grazing rights and mowing services, since it seems to vary greatly.  Bill Fosher used to get paid handsomely to manage vegetation under power lines with his sheep, and I know many farmers who lease land in order to get grazing access, so I’m curious why my Sullivan road show is in the sweet spot of parity.  Is it a function of the town’s nostalgia for sheep, generosity toward the new guy, the paucity of reliable mowing services, or something else entirely?