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G-double-Ewe: Regenerative Agriculture on an Urban Campus Images & Story by vidya Muthupillai

Tucked away in a corner of George Washington University on an early spring Monday, two herds are quickly gathering in and around the GroW Community Garden:

The first is a typical university flock: students, staff, and faculty – humming with excitement, craning, and cooing into the GroW Garden where something wooly is underway...

Students, faculty, and staff gather around the GroW Community Garden on H St. to observe GW's wooliest visitors.

The second: “Lambmowers,” a flock of fluffy sheep chowing down on the garden’s overgrowth of weeds, onion grass, and flowering grasses amidst Washington D.C.’s concrete jungle.

Herd of regenerative agriculture?

In addition to being ridiculously cute, the burgeoning celebrity sheep are here on an important ecological and outreach mission: supporting regenerative agriculture on campus. More specifically at the GroW Garden, this sisterherd of the traveling sheep is helping prepare the garden for Spring planting by providing a host of ecosystem services.

“For us,” GroW Garden Manager Nick Smaldone says, “they’re going to eat our weeds, repair our beds to plant in, and fertilize the soil with their droppings.”

For Smaldone, this is an experiment of “urban sustainability in action” to pair the more extensive process of grazing, which requires a lot of land, with more intensive systems like gardening in urban settings.

The project, Smaldone says, is inspired in part by the research of Professor Ginger Allington who documented the changes in rangeland practices where once-intact pastures in China and Mongolia became broken up and ranchers began using traveling herds across smaller urban plots of land. Often, these smaller traveling herds would move in trailers across the city, which got him thinking:

“If they can move [livestock] around on a truck, so can we.” - Nick Smaldone

Pictured: the "Lambmobile," a custom trailer built for Lambmowers to transport, unload, and reload the traveling flock of sheep. The trailer is towed by a hybrid Ram-- truck.

Enter: the "Lambmowers"

Under the watchful eye of Chief Shepherd Cory Suter, the “Lambmowers” are the “safest and cutest weed-control Services in the DMV” thanks to the herd of Babydoll Southdown sheep that travel across suburban and urban Fairfax County, Arlington, and the D.C. metro area to provide what Suter has dubbed “natural lawncare services.”

As herbivores, Suter says his sheep are “a natural part of the soil food web, where they’re consuming biomass and using that to help feed the soil so new biomass can grow even more productive and more lush.”
Three of the 10 sheep gather in one corner of the garden to graze on clovers, onion grass, and other weeds from the GroW Garden's winter cover cropping.

Between the 10 sheep hard at work on the GroW Garden, Suter estimates they will eat about six pounds of weeds, grass, and cover-cropping in their two-hour shift.

The sheep pause grazing to contemplate their growing GW fanbase.

While munching away, the fluffy hires will also be “converting the biomass into a carbon-rich pellet fertilizer” and sometimes “a liquid fertilizer that is very nutrient rich.” In other words, leveraging the natural digestive powers of ruminants to create more circular carbon cycles on-site.

It’s an effect easily underestimated, but “small-scale livestock is amazing at producing fertility and putting carbon back into the ground,” says Suter. “It’s where carbon should belong, right?”

In addition to live-action fertilizing, using small-scale grazing for lawncare provides other benefits. The lambmower, Suter says, is “not as perfect” as the typical lawn mower, and “a little less manicured” with the tendency to select for nibbling weeds and the sweet tips of grass for a more selective mow. Unlike the wheels on a lawnmower, the sheep’s “little hoofs can provide aeration services” to the soil by turning it over and compacting it. Between the fertilizing, weed-whacking, gentle mowing, and till-free soil aeration, Suter says the herd makes an “all-in-one lawncare machine, that also happens to be very cute and peaceful.”

The herd’s role at the GroW Garden is a bit more specialized, where Suter says they “are an ideal start of the season” to mow down the winter’s cover cropping whose function of protecting and replenishing the soil during the off-season is coming to an end. In the early-Spring pre-growing season, Suter says bringing in Lambmowers to target the wiliest of weeds is also “a great way to clear off the seed heads before the weeds go to seed” to prevent them from spreading in the future.

It’s a unique window for the GroW Garden, just weeks before the season’s plantings are to take place; a little later, and the flock might have taken to munching on the garden’s seedlings instead of weedlings. Suter admits that the Lambmowers would probably not be the best solution for a garden full of lush vegetables, but recommends his services to urban orchards as “a great way to eat the weeds around the fruit trees.”

The heavily-fleeced foragers on their peak-afternoon break under the shade of the branching fig tree, seem to agree.

Part of the flock takes a break from grazing in the afternoon heat and rests under the fig tree while others gather around the water bucket placed by Chief Shephard Cory Suter.

Soon, the sheep are back to work, herded to the other side of the garden for the sun-sweetened grass as Suter recalls his path to shepherd-hood.

Suter grew up on a Mennonite homestead, where agriculture was in the family: His great-grandfather was a pioneer organic orange farmer in Sarasota, Florida and his grandparents had a homestead in Ohio. Growing up, Suter had sheep, goats, and chickens in addition to fruit trees and a large garden that provided almost half of their food. It’s an upbringing that made agriculture feel comfortable for Suter, and called him back.

During his time in Philadelphia with Teach for America, Suter “got hooked into the Philadelphia Orchard Project,” which was his first foray into urban agriculture where he learned about different fruit trees that do well in the urban environment– from persimmons to jujube to the fig tree that his herd curiously chomped in the GroW Garden.

Suter introduces a member of the flock to the crowd.

From there on out, it was urban agriculture for Suter, who went on to lead the Fairfax Food Council of Urban Agriculture Workers before ultimately resigning to run Lambmowers full-time due to surging demand.

Sustainability Am-baa-sadors

Suter’s jump to the unconventional niche of traveling sheep shepherd was borne from wanting to inspire, to “meet different people and share the message about regenerative agriculture and more sustainable ways of caring for the land.” Lambmowers is an “ideal way to teach people in a way that would excite [them] about something different,” says Suter.

Students learn about sustainable agricultural practices by interacting with the sheep and Chief Shephard Cory Suter.

It’s a strategy that has worked so far.

On a previous Lambmowers trip, a client casually posted the incoming hoofed houseguests on social media, only for nearly a hundred onlookers to gather around in the suburban neighborhood, causing crowds on the sidewalk and blocking street parking for blocks. Now Suter advises clients to post retroactively to prevent the alternative-lawncare-inspired flash mobs.

Students line up around the garden to see the Lambmowers.

On a different occasion, a TikTok from a client went viral, amassing a whopping 4.2 million views and prompting a surge of engagement – including from the people who built Suter’s custom sheep trailer in Illinois who saw the TikTok and reported an increase in demands for their business.

Suter captures marketing content for Lambmowers during his gigs.

Their un-baa-lievable popularity has extended to GW, where they have been featured on the university’s official social media, on-campus newsletters, and invited back to Sustainable GW’s Earth Day “Eco-Bash,” which featured custom “Eco-Baaaash” buttons. On campus, Josh Lasky, the Director of the GW’s Office of Sustainability, says the flock is treated “like royalty” with visits from important university administrators and adoring gazes from students, faculty, and staff alike.

Eco-Baaash pins were featured alongside the Lambmowers at GW's largest annual Zero Waste Earth Day celebration.

With people across the United States demanding a Lambmowers franchise and GW students demanding their return, Suter says he “would like to expand” and is encouraging others to take up the mantle. “I would love to help other companies get started,” Suter says, “that’s something I’m actively looking for.”

Grazing lawncare services are a great way for other farmers to incorporate a new revenue stream for their business that both brings in a steady stream of income and saves on feed costs, according to Suter.

Of all his revenue streams – renting out the guest cottage at his farm, selling berries at a farm stand, farm tours, and potentially selling wool – “sheep grazing is by far the most profitable,” Suter says, because “people really enjoy connecting with animals, and are looking for ways to care for their lawns in ways that don’t poison their pets and kids with toxic herbicides.”

Tips for Traveling Shepherds

For now, Suter is focusing on starting some new flocks after building a new pen for baby lambs last Spring and is giving out free tips for aspiring traveling shepherds:

First, keep a routine where the sheep learn to go on the trailer on their own. For Suter, this is rattling the feed container to signal the herd back into the Lamb-mobile.

Pictured in video: Cory Suter rattles feed bucket while yelling "baaaa sheep!" to encourage the herd to head back to the Lambmobile

Second, fence off everything, Suter says, pointing out a suspicious part of the fencing near a more barren area of the GroW Garden. The sheep, he says, can be “escape artists,” though generally more in the direction of lush grass.

One of the sheep peers out from behind the temporary fencing set up around the GroW Garden.

Going Forw-herd:

Suter’s end goal is ultimately “raising awareness about incorporating livestock into small farms,” which his small but mighty team of himself, one part-time staff member, and one intern are advancing steadily.

In front of the GroW Community Garden, part of the change is taking place as word of regenerative agricultural practices using sheep rapidly disseminates through the crowd: Passersby perplexed by the flock of sheep inquire about the GroW Garden happenings from another stranger who delivers the regenerative agriculture spiel which, they too, only just learned from another.

In some ways, Garden Manager Nick Smaldone says the sheep are “more for show than practicality,” highlighting their valuable role as a community outreach tool for the agroecological approach that the GroW Garden is reaching for.

Pictured: GroW Garden Manager Liana Friedman explains the sheep's role in the GroW Garden's regenerative agricultural practices to the crowd gathered.

GroW Garden Managers Nick Smaldone and Liana Friedman pose with a bucket of compost gifted to the GroW Garden from Cory Suter.

It’s a dual effect that Suter also recognizes:

“If you brought out an electric lawnmower, you wouldn’t have a crowd… accomplishing this is bringing so much joy” - Cory Suter, Lambmowers

Eventually, Smaldone hopes the Lambmowers model will be permanent in the city, stating “If D.C. could have a couple of namesake sheep, that would really make the system.” What’s left is getting everyone to agree on the names.

A special thanks to the GroW Garden Managers Nick Smaldone and Liana Friedman, the Lambmowers, and Chief Shepherd Cory Suter!

See more from the GroW Garden @thegrowgarden on Instagram, and learn more about Cory Suter and the Lambmowers at lambmowers.com!

Created By
Vidya Muthupillai
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Photos by Vidya Muthupillai