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It’s like a scene out of the novel Heidi. Goats munching peacefully on the green of a bucolic hillside. Except that scene takes place in your own backyard. And those goats? They’re yours for hire for the week.
Goat grazing has butted its way into Bay Area hearts as a popular landscaping and fire prevention tool for residents and companies across the Peninsula. San Francisco International Airport used them to clear a sensitive area of land this past summer. Even Google has hired goats to “mow” its lawns in the past.
The 50-goat herd of City Grazing is one such rent-a-goat company. It provides the Bay Area with green-conscious weed and brush control.
The company’s Assistant Goat Herder, James Carp, brings us nose to nose with these ruminants at the goat’s home base in the San Francisco Bay Railyard. He reveals some of the surprising reasons Bay Area residents have chosen to hire goats.
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