Typically when fire season starts, we see lots of photos and news stories about goats keeping down the brush. They make great pets and great hillside brush guzzlers. I had three myself. While the goats did an admirable job, an acre and a half has a lot of brush. We still had to hire a very expensive crew to knock down what remained after the goats got done noshing during the spring.
One day, my husband, Marshall Thompson, and I heard about sheep for adoption. Some good friends of ours at Animal Acres, a farm rescue out in Acton, had rescued some Barbados Blackbelly sheep from very unpleasant conditions at a local slaughterhouse. These are beautiful sheep that look exactly like deer and are about the same size. Contrary to the eating habits of goats, which nibble, sheep tend to eat right down to the ground. These sheep are somewhat wild and do not play kissy face with their owners, but with time are pretty tame. Best of all they do not need shearing though they wisely grow a heavier coat in the winter.
So my husband and I decided that some sheep would be cheaper than the annual weed abatement expense. We passed the adoption test and adopted four. When they arrived, they were as wild as could be. Gradually they became tamer. We had one neutered male and three beautiful females, all about 70 pounds. The gestation period is about 150 days, and before we knew it, we had Heckle and Jeckle as well as Duka, as the girls got pregnant at the slaughterhouse.
The first fire season was amazing-the sheep ate everything. We pointed to our downhill neighbor’s place when people came to visit saying, “Before,” and then pointing to ours, “After.” Aside from the cost of hay and a great little barn my husband built, there were no costs. And, best of all, no future costs for crews to clear the place! Thanks to our cute Barbados Blackbellies, we have a perfect defensible space with no weeds whatsoever.
Susan M. Tellem