The ability to raise livestock in our back yards or urban environments may be restricted by local municipal regulations. However, smaller landowners, even in urban environments, can turn small spaces into useful and productive environments. Some examples of small back yard agriculture include: (1) growing vegetables and herbs in container gardens or buckets; (2) constructing small intensive raised-bed gardens; (3) raising chickens in urban environments (see urbanchickens.org too); (4) keeping urban beehives (people living in urban environments have been encouraged to keep bees); and (5) there are many other examples of urban agriculture as well. More from the Harvard University Gazette (emphasis added):

“I’d always heard the stories of the traditions of cows grazing in the Yard and really couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see one,” said Radcliffe alumna Naomi Shore. “I think it’s great fun.”

The response was just what Cox was hoping for. While the ceremony provided a lighthearted break from the pressures and pace of the early back-to-school frenzy, it also offered something a little more concrete, remarked the professor.

The cow’s presence, Cox told the crowd, represents “how much closer we need to be to the animals that sustain us, to the Earth, the grass, the vegetables. … Perhaps it shouldn’t be such an oddity to see a cow grazing in Harvard Yard. If it happened once, perhaps it could happen again. And if not a cow, [or] a pasture, perhaps then at least a garden,” he said, adding that if the White House lawn could have a garden Harvard Yard surely could.

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