After starring roles in the Bible, shepherds and their flocks are hot again. The solar industry is hiring as many as it can find to clear weeds in solar-panel fields.
The laborious job of clearing weeds in solar-panel fields has triggered a welcome boom for American shepherds and their flocksDEPORT, Texas—from a field of solar panels on a recent day worked without complaint, despite the summer heat.
“It’s changing all of our lives,” said Mr. Valdez, 45 years old. He expects the flocks he oversees to soon generate several hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue. The solar windfall helped Mr. Valdez pay off his house in San Antonio.Solar technician Christy King stops to pet sheep grazing around solar panels.
Grazing animals looked like front-runners but logistical constraints thinned the herd. Cows and horses are too big to fit under the panels. Goats are happy to eat any noxious weed but also chew on wiring and climb on equipment.Mr. Valdez is responsible for the 1,700 sheep that dot the solar farm owned by Lightsource BP in Deport. He gets a cut of the money paid to the flock’s owner.
Hiring sheep for landscaping goes back decades. The White House had a flock of sheep to keep weeds in check during World War I. But before the dawn of the solar industry, many sheepherders faced hard times. Demand for domestic lamb and mutton has fallen to imports from Australia and New Zealand—nations that along with China also dominate the global wool market.Some shepherds are now so bullish they are taking loans to expand flocks. After speaking with Mr.
Many solar shepherds cut expenses by using breeds that don’t need shearing. The Lightsource BP farm uses dorper sheep, many topped with striking black heads, and katahdin, first raised in Maine some decades ago for meat. Some of the animals like being petted while they graze. Finding enough of them is a challenge, said Mr. Baute, a longtime farmer. He works as a middleman between shepherds and solar developers, basically a sheep broker. He wandered into the job in 2018, after he hired a flock to trim grass at a 50-acre solar farm run by Silicon Ranch.PLC, was so pleased with the work it bought Mr. Baute’s nascent sheep-broker business. Flocks now dine across 12,500 acres of the company’s solar farms, mostly in the Southeast.
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