Not 'baa'd: Heritage hires flock of sheep to cut grass at M-72 solar farm

May 16—TRAVERSE CITY — There's a common misconception about renewable energy farms — once solar panels take possession of the land, it's no longer usable.

Heritage Sustainable Energy — and a flock of sheep — said baa-baa-bye to that myth. Its two solar farms off M-72 in Traverse City will provide food for the sheep, which will in turn keep the spaces under the solar panels trimmed.

The ewes, which are less than a year old, were dropped off May 11 by Empire farmer Dan Wiesen and will stay at the solar farm until they are ready to be bred in October. The four sheep started going to work within minutes of touching down on their new home, munching on grass down to the nub in a corralled-off pen while wagging their stubbed tails.

By the time Wiesen picks up the sheep in October, the sheep will be about 20 pounds heavier — mostly from the grass they'll eat. They'll also have a full coat of wool after arriving at the solar farm bare, caught up to date on shots and treated for worms.

"We thought as a company it would be a good idea to use that land for something more than just green energy," Heritage Operations Manager Bart Hautala said. "Rather than spend resources like electricity or gasoline to cut the grass — why not get a local farmer to put some sheep in there? Then he can use the land to grow his livestock, and they can help us keep the grass trimmed."

There's not much that goes on at the solar farm. When the sun is out, it makes electricity; when the panel is covered in snow, it makes less electricity.

Now drivers will see the sheep throughout the summer and fall hard at work cutting grass on the busy Traverse City highway.

"The nice thing about this is they have shade, they have shelter if it rains," Wiesen said. "There's no carbon footprint here whatsoever. None."

Wiesen, the owner of Empire Hop Farm, said sheep are pretty docile animals. Unlike goats, sheep do not eat much more than vegetation. In fact: sheep prefer broad-leafed grass — a.k.a. 'weeds' to the rest of us.

Sheep are ruminants, which comes from the Latin word ruminare "to chew over again." So are cattle, goats, buffalo, elk, giraffe and camels. All these animals have a stomach with four compartments and billions of tiny microorganisms to allow them to break down grass in ways humans can't.

According to the Canadian Cattleman's Association, ruminants don't completely chew the grass or vegetation they eat.

The partially chewed grass goes into the large rumen where it is stored and broken down into balls of 'cud'. When the animal has eaten its fill it will rest and "chew its cud." The cud is swallowed again, passed into the next three compartments of the stomach, and digested.

The benefit of the sheep over cattle, however, is that they leave less of a trace (cow pies can be substantial). When sheep go number two, Wiesen said it looks more like little pellets.

"If you put cows in here they're too big, they can't get under there (the solar panels). If you put goats in here, they jump up on all the panels all the time. The sheep will keep it all trim. They're nice and neat," Wiesen said. "They're not too brilliant, let's put it that way.

"Goats are very curious. A goat will get into everything in the world, trouble, like a pig does. But sheep, they don't care. They just want to eat and they'll just chill out."

Hautala said the wiring for the solar farm is contained in conduit, so even if the sheep did try and eat the wires Traverse City won't experience a power outage.

He also said there's no concern of the sheep getting burned in the event they do rub up on the panels. If they did, it would be a design flaw because the trapped heat on the panels would be a sign energy is being wasted.

"You and I could walk up and touch a solar panel in the summer, it'll be warm, but it won't be hot enough to make you want to burn," Hautala said. "It's not like a concentrated photovoltaic system, which you've seen in movies, where there's a big tower, and there's better mirrors around it. That would be a concentrated system, and that would definitely get very hot."

Hautala said Heritage has never done anything like this before.

Wiesen said the sheep serve a similar purpose on the farm back in Empire.

Hops growers have to clean the bottom of the vine, or bine, so the air flows through to ease the disease pressure. The sheep are just the right height.

"We tried it with some friends who had goats and they ate the whole damn vine," Wiesen said. "The sheep will eat the leaves. They eat all the weeds on the ground, the grass, and the leaves up so high and they're perfect. In New Zealand, they've done that forever."

Because animals are in the same field as a food product, that practice has led to a little bit of food safety concern in the U.S. Nonetheless, Wiesen says if the sheep are removed before the hops flower out into cones the product is not contaminated.

Now the farm just off the land for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is going through a transition, but Wiesen used to sell to MI Local Hops in Acme, which does business with all the big name breweries like Founders, Bell's and New Holland.

The M-72 wind turbine has been in place since 1994, which later became surrounded by a one megawatt solar array in 2017. A two megawatt array just down the road was installed in 2018.

Hautala said a good place to park for residents who want to get a glimpse of the sheep would be a driveway off Harrys Road that leads to a church Heritage sublets to.

There's also a gravel turnaround off M-72 coming out of downtown Traverse City with a plaque that describes what's going on at the wind farm.

The four sheep don't have names (yet) but they do have tags to track disease and breeding history.

Follow Andrew Rosenthal on Twitter @ByAndrewR