Via the New York Times, a story on how folks are surviving the downturn by finding jobs as agricultural entrepreneurs, making a go in niche businesses like aeroponic veggies, pop-up grocery stores in food deserts, and the eponymous sheep lawnmowing business:

Mr. Miller, 23, is the founder of Heritage Lawn Mowing, a company that rents out sheep — yes, sheep — as a landscaping aid. For a small fee, Mr. Miller, whose official job title is “shepherd,” brings his ovine squad to the yards of area homeowners, where the sheep spend anywhere from three hours to several days grazing on grass, weeds and dandelions.

The results, he said, are a win-win: the sheep eat free, saving him hundreds of dollars a month in food costs, and his clients get a freshly cut lawn, with none of the carbon emissions of a conventional gas-powered mower. (There are, of course, other emissions, which Mr. Miller said make for “all-natural fertilizer.”)

“They countrify a city,” Mr. Miller said of his four-legged staff. “And they lend a lot of awareness about how people lived in the past.”

Also in the article, a shout-out to the WWOOFers: "Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms,...has become, for the 4-H crowd, what Stanford’s computer science department has been for Silicon Valley."

Read the full story here.