Julie Bishop was driving to her mother's house in southern New Jersey when something caught her eye. Behind the tall chain-link fence of a solar site, a crew was mowing the grass.
"I'm like, that is a complete waste," she says.
Julie had good reason to notice. Her husband gifted her an Australian cattle dog named Miss Mandy one Valentine's Day. To make the most of the dog's instincts, Julie signed up for herding lessons. But the lessons were in northern New Jersey, a long drive from home. So, she bought a few sheep to practice with on her six-acre farm. Then founded Solar Sheep LLC.
"I decided I liked doing sheep more than I liked the horses," says Julie, who raised racehorses for years. Sheep also breed faster than horses. Before long, her flock had outgrown the farm.
On a later trip past the solar site, she spotted a sign on the gate with an emergency phone number. She called it.
"I said, 'Well, first off, there is no emergency,'" she recalls. Then she asked about grazing her sheep inside the fence. The man on the other end didn't hesitate. "He says, 'Where have you been? We've been looking!'"
That was around 2011. At the time, few people in the U.S. had heard of solar grazing. Getting approval through the township took a while. Today, solar grazing is a growing industry, and Julie promotes it every chance she gets.
The setup is simple; the concept proven
Sheep don't need special arrays. In Julie's experience, a typical solar site needs only minor changes during construction to work for grazing. Getting those details right upfront costs little. Fixing them later can cost more.
Fencing is one example. Developers often attach fences to the outside of the posts because they look better. Julie says livestock fence belongs on the inside, facing the animals. "Then the stock don't push on the fence and pop the staples off," she explains. Coyote wire can then run on the other side of the same posts, with no extra posts needed.
Ground cover is another. Every site needs something to hold the soil. Developers often pick low-growing plants to cut down on mowing. Julie suggests spending a little more on forage that sheep actually eat. "More is better...then you can feed more sheep," she says.
Overall management matters. Julie rotates her sheep through sections of a site rather than leaving them in one place. By her estimate, that can produce about twice as much forage from the same ground.
The sheep come out ahead, too. The panels give them steady shade on hot days. That's critical, because heat stress hurts reproduction, which limits how many lambs a shepherd can sell or keep to expand the flock.
The arrangement works for everyone. Developers save on mowing; Julie gains land and income; and neighbors see working farmland that also produces energy.
