Tuesday, April 3

Cute Gardeners

Every once in a while I run into something that makes me think there might be hope for our world this side of a zombie apocalypse. The latest instance even came with cute faces!

Ewe-niversally Green is a landscaping service in Georgia with a green twist - they use goats (and dogs) to clear up overgrown properties. I accidentally discovered them while following an Internet rabbit hole (thank you very much, Pinterest...)! They were featured here, helping new home owners reclaim their jungle of a yard from invasive ivy and other sprawling plants that threatened to engulf their space.

Their sheep and goats, contained by a portable solar-powered electric fence and herded/ protected by sheepdogs, cheerfully munch properties clean of unwanted overgrowth. Why does this make me happy?
  • It costs less than bringing in traditional landscape services, making property maintenance and improvement more accessible to home owners.
  •  It provides valuable work for dog breeds like border collies who need work to thrive - and who often end up in kennels or rescue farms because people can't give them work or handle the anxious behavior that results without it.
  •  It's environmentally clean - other than the initial ride over to the property in a truck, the whole operation is clean and based on renewable resources!
  • It's a small business - the kind proven to provide the most new jobs and long-term benefits to communities.  
Along the same lines, a friend recently told me about Geese Off! a company serving New York/ Connecticut that employs border collie teams to safely and humanely keep geese off commercial properties like schools, colleges, cemeteries, and golf courses.

 

(Want to see a happy border collie? Check out the [filthy] floppy paws of joy at 1:17 in the video.)

It is small, practical and unpretentiously sustainable enterprises like these that I believe will populate (and create!) the future of successful American business.

What about you? Would you consider using an animal based service instead of a machine based one?

No comments:

Post a Comment