Re: [tomato] Kudzu
Diane Roeder (Tomato@GlobalGarden.com)
Tue, 13 Apr 1999 20:09:19 -0400
I'm getting a little tired of reading about kudzu, but since I raise
sheep I thought I'd throw in my two cents, a couple of paragraphs from a
national sheep publication:
Sheep being considered for year-round, weed-whacking work
Tallahassee, Fla., has a big problem that just keeps on growing
.... and growing. It's kudzu, an invasive species that's killing trees
and shorting out power lines as it creeps and crawls its way around the
northern Florida city.
But the fast-growing weed may soon be chomped down to an
acceptable
size.
Tallahassee city officials are awaiting a proposal from Dick
Henry, an
enterprising New Hampshire sheep producer, who would like to fatten up
250-500 of his sheep on free fodder. The sheep, in return, would keep
the kudzu in check by grazing one-acre allotments at a time ... before
moving on to the next bountiful buffet.
Henry says sheep are right for the job since they can easily
scramble
over steep terrain, are placid, and unlike goats, flock nicely.
"And when you see a 120-pound sheep, you don't grab your two-year-old
and start running away," Henry told a Tallahassee Democrat reporter. "In
a place like a public park, people won't be saying, 'Hey, my kid's going
to get crushed!'"
Henry's proposal for year-round employment of his sheep would
cost
roughly $80,000 -- well under the hundreds of thousands city officials
estimate they'd have to spend on mechanical and chemical control
methods.
Diane