Recently Bel Air High School had a few visitors. They were not students, nor professors from universities—but goats. The Harmony Herd Church farm brought in their team of goats to reduce the overgrown vegetation across from the parking lot. Mrs. Ronnie Cassily and her group of 20 very hungry goats came in and cleared out the invasive species for Bel Air.

“We do this mostly in the springtime, when there’s a bunch of new growth and the growing season is in full swing,” she said. She contracts her goats out to local parks, schools, and organizations to help clean up their areas. “They’ll eat anything from multiflora rose, to honeysuckle, to poison ivy.”

It may seem pretty silly to hire out goats to clean up overgrown areas, but it is very environmentally friendly. Not only is there no heavy machinery necessary, but differing from usual methods to clear overgrown invasive species, no chemicals are used, there is no soil disruption, and they can get into specialized areas that machines could not. There are also no fossil fuels used for the production of the machines, transportation of the machines, and use of the machines. The goats prove themselves to be “soil and solar powered weed eaters,” as Mrs. Cassily put it.

Harmony Herd Farm and the goats will be at Rockfield Park all this May, clearing out invasive species, in an environmentally friendly way.