Money's tight, times are hard. Here's a goat, clearing your yard

Didnt they do this at the White House 70 years ago?

ANDOVER, Mass. (AP) — A Boston suburb has some new landscapers that will work for food — a half-dozen goats clearing and maintaining an overgrown public meadow.
Under a pilot program in Andover, Lucy McKain's dairy goats will rotate their grazing around the meadow for an all-you-can-eat buffet of grass, brush and other growth. The goats can clear as much as a half acre every three days at no cost.
The fact it's free is important to Andover officials, since money is tight and they couldn't afford the heavy equipment, fuel and labor needed to clean up the meadow. Plus, goat landscaping is environmentally friendly.
If the program is a success, Andover officials want to make more public parkland available to other grazing animals.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20091017-NEWS-910179991

Nothing new under the sun. The park in Boston, known as the Boston Commons, was a place where residents in the 1630s could graze their animals. It was eventually overgrazed and used for hangings instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Common

"In or about
the year of our Lord
One Thousand Six Hundred
thirty and four
the then present inhabitants
of the Town of Boston of whom
the Hon John Winthrop Esq
Gov of the Colony was Chiefe
did treat and agree with
Mr William Blackstone
for the purchase of his
Estate and any
Lands living within said
neck of Land called
Boston
after which purchase the
Town laid out a plan for
a trayning field for which ever
since and now is used for
that purpose and for
the feeding of cattell"

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Neighbors around the corner "hire" their goats out to remove vegetation year round. I don't know if they actually charge for the service, but it is popular.
Bonehead

I heard somewhere the Libertarian Party would outlaw such things

It's common to see sheep maintaining organic vineyards here. The cost is half compared to maintenance using tractors and herbicide. Some are trained to dislike the taste of grape stems and leaves, which lengthens their useful season.

[UC 2007]University of California Cooperative Extension ... Following the recommendations of noted animal behaviorist Fred Provenza of Utah State University, the researchers let sheep eat their fill of grape leaves, and then administered a small, harmless dose of a medicine that made them nauseous. "The sheep experience a brief period of malaise," Doran said. "They recover quickly, but they don't seem to forget, even after nine months."

Initial field observations at the UC Hopland Research and Extension Center, south of Ukiah, showed that, unlike their untrained counterparts, the trained sheep did not like immature grapes or grape leaves.

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You think the lawnmore industry will be hurt by this

Nah. One of the articles I looked at noted that you don't want them in a residential garden because they eat all the landscaping and poop everywhere. About the same as a similar number of deer going through your garden. Not what you want where you entertain, or where your kids play!

Some city folks bought an old neglected orchard near here. Somebody convinced them to let him run his cows in there. Big mistake. Cows will stand on their hind legs to reach up as far as they can to eat tender buds, leaves, even twigs. And they break off some larger limbs. That grazing left the orchard a mess. There were no fruit-bearing twigs left within 6+ ft of the ground; no fruit grew for years where you could reach it without a ladder. And those lowest branchs won't grow back quickly because they are in the shade of the upper limbs.