The lawnmower was broken. Not that I knew how to use it, anyway, as I’d spent my whole life until a year ago in lawn-less New York City. Now, though, I was in Boulder, Colo., with waist-high weeds in my yard. I refused to even consider herbicides, but my attempt to pull the weeds by hand proved futile: After several hours, all I had to show was one small patch of bare turf and an aching back.
The weeds didn’t bother my boyfriend, who reasoned that it was all just leafy green stuff and therefore natural and therefore good — demonstrating, as the saying sort of goes, that one woman’s weed is another man’s wildflower. But, though some of the weeds were beautiful, I knew enough about gardening to understand that sometimes you have to be ruthless. So I did what any environmentally conscious, recently transplanted city girl would do: I hired a herd of goats.
Guggenhime sowing his wild goats.
Photo: Hillary Rosner.
The goats belong to Jim Guggenhime, who is 27 years old, blond, good-looking, and exactly as laidback as you’d expect a professional goatherd to be. Before college, Gugg... Read more
