As this year’s monsoon season brings more rainfall to Santa Fe, Peggyjoy Hodgen tells SFR those working with the Railyard Park Conservancy are “excited” to be seeing a greener, fuller Railyard Park.
“The rain helps everything grow, so we’re seeing growth in our grasslands and our trees,” Hodgen, the conservancy’s director of horticulture, says.
However, the native plants are not the only ones growing.
“We’re also seeing it in some invasive [species]—we’re seeing a lot more Tree of Heaven and [Siberian] elm out there that are growing faster than we can stay on top of them,” Hodgen adds.
Enter the goats.
Through a partnership with the Quivira Coalition, a local nonprofit dedicated to “building economic and ecological resilience on western working landscapes” and using goats and sheep from the Horned Locust Remediation, the Railyard Park Conservancy utilizes prescribed grazing in the park to help restore the native grassland along the northern end of Cerrillos Road.
On the days when organizers deploy goats and sheep, aka “Graze Days,”—coming up on Aug. 9-10—the community can come see the goats while they work and learn about prescribed grazing from staff representing all three organizations.
“It brings neighborhoods together—neighbors come out and meet each other,” Amanita Thorp Berto, co-owner of Horned Locust Remediation, tells SFR. “It’s got a lot of benefits. Usually on a Saturday, we’ll have a lot of kids and families come check things out.”
Thorp Berto says the Railyard Park Conservancy turned to prescribed grazing (also known as “goatscaping”) while trying to find a way to manage the park in “the natural, more sustainable ways.”
“Plants and animals evolved together, and in situations where they’ve diverged, things just go wrong,” Thorp Berto says of goatscaping. “You get an overabundance of weeds, you don’t have the fertility or the good bugs or the support for fungus—goats bring that all back; they put it back into balance. Using goats is easier on the environment; it’s a lot more friendly.”
Compared to last year, Thorp Berto says, there’s “an abundance of weeds” to be cleared in the Railyard Park area on Graze Days, which Hodgen describes as being popular with its visitors including kids, adults and even their own pets.
“It’s awesome to get to be out there and see that juxtaposition of having these grazing, range-land animals alongside Cerrillos Road with Allsup’s in the background,” Hodgen says. “It’s a way to connect with your community and to see a really cool example of how we’re moving forward into this very scary space of global climate change, but that there are very helpful and beautiful opportunities to be part of ecological resilience.”
The Railyard Park Conservancy’s goatscaping project is partially funded by the New Mexico Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Soil Program, which offers land managers access to “soil health testing, education and training opportunities” in addition to financial and technical assistance to improve soil across the state. Other ways the goats and sheep help the area soil’s health include the conservancy using them for fertilizer and the goats tamping down soil and creating divots that collect rainfall. Hodgen says that when soil is managed healthily, water infiltration improves as well.
“By not having bare ground, by eliminating compaction, by allowing that natural fertilizer more root structure, the better water can percolate into the soil,” Hodgen says. “A great reason to have the goats and sheep is they can come in and, in one day, have a really big impact in an area.”
Hodgen adds that the goats and sheep are being utilized to “integrate animals” into land management alongside the state agriculture department’s other healthy soil principles to maintain the park, which include keeping soil covered; minimizing soil disturbance on crop land, maximizing biodiversity and maintaining a living root.
“In my opinion, the Railyard Park Conservancy is allowing Railyard Park to be a really critical natural resource, and we’re going to be enhancing the ecology for our entire city,” she says. “The more water we can store in our soil, the more resilient and healthy our entire city’s going to be.”
Meet the grazing goats and sheep from 10 am until 3 pm on both August 9 and 10, at the corner of S Guadalupe Street and Cerrillos Road in Railyard Park. If you don’t see the animals upon arrival, walk through the park and follow posted signage leading to the grazing area.