lawnmowers

Here's our version of mowing the front yard:

The morning shift, a very happy single effort by our Connemara mare. How can you tell she's happy? a) she's covered with dirt, and b) she's got her head buried in a large clump of grass. The recipe for a happy horse.

I graze the mare in the early morning, because that's when grass is the safest for horses to eat. The sugars are lowest first thing in the morning -- as the day progresses and the sun "bakes" the grass, the sugar content increases, and that's not a good thing for horses. Before I knew better, I used to graze both of our ponies on our yard in the evenings, which might be a contributing factor to our little Shetland developing Insulin Resistance. (I'm going to blog about the details of his metabolic problems in the near future.) He is no longer allowed to graze at all, even a mouthful of grass can be dangerous to him. He only gets food that is specifically balanced with a known sugar content now.

And here's the evening lawnmowing shift. This is a team effort! The sheep can utilize the grass safely when it's higher in sugar content, so they get the bulk of the lawnmowing duties, coming up to the front yard to graze for an hour or two each evening. Believe it or not, despite the fact that the grass is pretty long right now, by mid-summer it will look like a manicured lawn. Ok, maybe not quite, but it'll be quite short and in control. People who don't know about our lawn-management strategy puzzle over the grass at that time of year, trying to figure out how we get such a short, even cut.

We DO own a traditional lawnmower. In fact, its' a very nice lawn tractor. We used it for exactly one season -- the summer we moved into our house. That fall we got sheep, parked the tractor, and it's been parked ever since.