Today marks the case of March literally going out like a lamb. Well, a ewe, if we’re going to split, uh, wool here.
Croydon’s Happy Valley Park will host 20 Herdwick and Jacob ewes over the next three months. The sheep will dutifully graze the chalky grassland in one of Britain’s most diverse wildlife habitats. You know, how it used to be done before lawn-mowers sputtered across the nation every Sunday afternoon.
For the past five years, Happy Valley has been managing its grassland by bringing in the ewes and allowing them to happily chomp away. It’s proven quite popular with visitors, and adds a lovely bit of Austenian romanticism to the park, which counts its wildflower habitat as the richest in Britain. We can see it now: a jodhpur-clad Mr. Darcy (or, perhaps, better? Colin Firth) striding through a cluster of ewes armed with a bouquet of…right, stopping now.
by Kira Hesser
Image by farmfoto courtesy of the Creative Commons Licence.
