Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Goats graze in their enclosure Friday at Mellomar Golf Park in Owings.
The owner of Mellomar Golf Park in Owings has found the perfect maintenance workers. They work seven days a week, they never complain about working weekends and they recognize no holidays. In fact, they aren’t even paid — or human.
These busy workers are goats from Prosperity Acres, a family-owned beef and goat farm in Sunderland. Mark “Doc” Grace, the golf park owner, made an agreement with Prosperity Acres’ Mary Bowen last July, and since that time 15 of Bowen’s goats, or half her herd, have been grazing on the commercial property, getting rid of unwanted vegetation more cheaply and safely than manpower and chemicals could, both Bowen and Grace maintain.
With large areas of briars, weeds and honeysuckle dividing the fairways on the golf course, golfers often lose their balls when they hit an unlucky shot into the rough, Grace said, and in the economic recession he needed an alternative way to get rid of the brush.
“I wanted my golfers to be able to go in the wooded areas and find their ball,” Grace said. “[Bowen] told me her goats were eating her out of house and home.”
So both are calling the arrangement a win-win situation.
Grace said his daughter, Emily, who attends Berry College in Georgia, known for its environmental science and agriculture programs, came home from college one semester and said she was tired of hearing him complain about how expensive it is to clear the unwanted vegetation at the park, which consists of a driving range, nine-hole par three course and regulation length nine-hole course. She suggested using goats instead, and he bought a couple of goats from the Bowen family as a pilot test for the idea, he said.
“We had the land for it,” Emily said. “We talked about how much land we could open up.”
When it became apparent that two goats could never do the whole job, Bowen sent Grace half her herd, and he bought a battery-powered electric fence to pen them into one area at a time. When they finish grazing that area, they are rotated to another, which happens about every three weeks. Within two or three years, or three or four rotations, Grace said he has been told by a University of Maryland Eastern Shore research professor that those weeds will not grow back.
“You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw how fast these goats cleared the brush out,” Grace said. “They obliviate everything from the ground level to about 6 feet. They stand on their back legs and just keep eating.”
UMES’s E. Nelson Escobar is now using the golf park goat experiment as part of his research, Grace said. “He thought putting goats on a golf course was a novel idea,” he said.
Most of the goats are still Bowen’s, however, and she and her children visit the golf park a few times a week to check in. Once she has enough meat orders for a load, the goats are slaughtered and she continues to sell the meat from their family farm. In the spring, the does will give birth there.
Bowen said she read that goats are often used for similar grazing techniques in the Midwest and Europe, and she is excited about being part of this local endeavor, especially since she benefits as well.
“He gets to use the goats, tells everybody about the goats, markets the meat,” she said. “I can sell the meat by telling people they’re fed naturally; they’re getting a natural mineral supplement. He’s been doing a great job, and we’ve been selling more meat because of it.”
She said she was looking to expand the goat farm anyway and would not have been able to rent affordable land without the deal with Grace, whose constant watch over the goats “makes me feel more comfortable.”
As for Grace, he saves thousands of dollars a year by using goats versus manpower and chemicals that can pollute the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
“There are just not enough high school kids that would do that kind of work,” he said. “And I can’t think of anything that’s more natural than this,” especially since goats do not erode or damage the earth.
With a farming background, Grace said the concept makes sense for him. Following a dream, he kept his 90-acre property economically viable by adding a driving range in 1994 and converting it into a full-fledged golf course in 2002, though he still tries to retain his farming roots. Next spring he hopes to start selling eggs laid fresh by his 15 chickens he keeps on the farm as supplemental income.
“Golf courses are having an extremely difficult time in this economy,” he said. “There is so much uncertainty, so discretionary income is not being spent at golf courses. If I have to do it with goats, if I have to do it with aliens, I plan to do what I have to do to keep my golf course in business.”
Patrons seem to enjoy the goat idea, he said.
“I have had golfers that discovered the goats, gone home, gotten a camera and come back with their kids and had them pose with the goats,” Grace said. “They enjoy interacting with people.”
What he finds most enjoyable, he said, is that the animals require very little attention other than conditioning them to recognize him as the hand that feeds them, with the use of a daily dietary supplement; should they ever escape the fence, they will not wander far, he said.
As for the goats’ safety, Grace said there is always an inherent risk of any person or animal on the greens to be hit with a golf ball, but usually they should be so far out of play when they are grazing an area of brush, he doesn’t feel there is much danger to the goats.
“I’m confident they’re as protected as they need to be,” he said. “My primary concern is the safety of the golfers. I have been hit by a golf ball a number of times. It is not comfortable, but it is certainly surviveable.”
“Ultimately the goats are very happy,” said Bowen, who now considers creating a business where she would rent goats to properties in the environmentally sensitive critical area, where strict regulations prevent landowners from using herbicides. “This is such an ‘eco’ way to go. More people should be doing this.”
mrussell@somdnews.com