Why Railyard Park Has Goats This October, and Why They're Coming Back for Halloween

"Cutest soil-management practice." That's how Peggyjoy Hodgen, horticulture director at the Railyard Park Conservancy, described the goats and sheep that work Railyard Park's grassland, speaking to The Santa Fe New Mexican in 2024. She still holds the title. The Conservancy's staff page, updated in March 2026, lists her in the same role.

"Cute" undersells the job. The tawny, uneven grass along the park's Cerrillos Road edge is a native grassland on a care plan, and livestock are one of its tools. This month that plan shows up twice. Goats and sheep from Horned Locust Goatscaping return Wednesday and Thursday, October 7 and 8, and come back again on Halloween.

The grass that looks unfinished

Most of Railyard Park's roughly 13 acres reads as a city park. Within that, the Conservancy manages 2.5 acres as native grassland. On that ground, the Graze Days project page lists reduced mowing alongside reseeding, composting, and removing invasive species.

Reduced mowing explains why that part of the park looks the way it does. It's left taller and looser than a lawn on purpose. In the 2024 New Mexican story, Hodgen said much of the grass may look dry or dead, but there are still things happening in that shrubby grassland. Nutrients keep moving through the plants all winter, she said, and bees and other creatures spend the season inside the grassy cover.

Santa Fe Reporter coverage the same year placed the grazing at the corner of South Guadalupe Street and Cerrillos Road, at the north end of the grassland strip along Cerrillos. The 2026 announcements don't name a spot. They say to follow the "Goats & Sheep This Way" signs. If you don't see the animals when you arrive, the Reporter said back then, follow the signs into the park.

What a herd does that a mower can't

Mowing is a single cut at a single height. The Conservancy's project page describes what grazing does in its place. The 2024 reporting breaks it into separate pieces of work:

1. Grazing as pruning. The animals eat native grasses and flowers, and Hodgen said that stimulates new growth.
2. Hooves as planters. Their steps press seed into the ground.
3. Hoofprints as water catchments. The small dents they leave hold rain where it falls.
4. Manure as fertilizer. The animals feed the soil as they go.
5. A gentler trim. Their nibbling removes extra foliage without the abruptness of a mower or a weed-whacker.

The Reporter tied the grazing to a wider set of healthy-soil principles the park follows: keep the soil covered, keep living roots in the ground, maximize biodiversity, and disturb the soil as little as possible. Those principles fit a dry, high-desert park. The park was completed in 2008, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith, architect Fredrick Schwartz, and artist Mary Miss, with water-harvesting features supporting its drought-tolerant plantings. The original system collected roof runoff to water the shade trees, the rose garden, and the naturally landscaped areas.

The method has limits. In August 2024 the Reporter saw greener growth after monsoon rain, and it also saw more weeds plus fast-growing invasive Tree of Heaven and Siberian elm. The grassland is still a work in progress, and the Conservancy's own description calls Graze Days an "ongoing restoration project."

Who brings the herd

The animals belong to Horned Locust Goatscaping, owned by Amanita Thorp Berto and Tom Berto. She told the New Mexican in 2024 that she had traveled with her flock for more than 20 years doing goat- and sheep-based landscaping. On grazing days, the Bertos' herd moves from one temporary pasture to the next in what the paper called "small-scale goat and sheep stampedes." That spreads manure evenly across the ground and gives the animals some competition, which keeps them eating.

The arrangement predates the Graze Days name by several years. In October 2019, KRQE reported that the City of Santa Fe had hired Thorp's herd, then more than 60 goats and sheep, as part of a three-year effort to restore the soil and grass across the park. "We're removing a lot of invasive weeds and then we're trimming the native plants that prefer to be trimmed by animals," she told the station that fall. A later New Mexican profile of the Bertos said the herd had worked Railyard Park two or three times a year over the previous four years.

The project now has more partners. The Railyard Park Conservancy and Quivira Coalition run Graze Days with the City of Santa Fe and Horned Locust. This year's visits fall under the Conservancy's Healthy Soils in the Railyard Park initiative, funded in part by grants from the Carol Petrie Foundation and the Santa Fe Garden Club.

The schedule moves around the year

The herd doesn't come back on a fixed date. In 2024, the New Mexican covered a spring visit timed to clear old brush before warmer weather and rain. The Reporter previewed another round that August. In 2025, the Railyard calendar listed Graze Days for October 8. This October has two visits.

The Railyard's event calendar lists the early-October visit as free. The Conservancy invites visitors to watch the animals work and learn about healthy-soil principles and prescribed grazing. For the Halloween visit, the Conservancy asks, "What better way to spend Halloween day than looking at all the cute mugs from Horned Locust Goatscaping!"

Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, and the Santa Fe Farmers' Market at 1607 Paseo de Peralta runs Saturdays year-round. Its October 10 listing gives hours of 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. If the market keeps those hours on the 31st, a market run and a visit to the herd fit into the same late morning.

Between grazes, the work is done by hand

The goats are the part of this work that draws a crowd. Most of the care happens without them. The Conservancy's Yardmasters are drop-in volunteers who handle specialized horticultural care on Tuesday and Thursday mornings all year, meeting at the shed on the south side of the Community Room. The volunteer page also lists grassland restoration as a year-round job, with two tasks: cutting back alfalfa between grazes and monitoring how the restoration is going.

The herd's value shows up in how it trades with that volunteer time. Janice Vascott, a Yardmaster, told the New Mexican in 2024 that what the goats and sheep get through in three days would take the volunteers much longer. "It all helps the park," she said. The October 8 visit lands on a Thursday, one of the Yardmasters' regular mornings.

That rhythm is what holds the grassland together. Volunteers keep up the weekly care, the herd arrives a few times a year for the heavy trimming, and the longer grass in between is left uncut by design.

Robyn has spent more than 35 years watching Santa Fe's land and the places people share, and she pays attention to how the city cares for them. If you're looking at a home near Railyard Park, or wondering how this kind of land care shapes the corner of town you already love, Robyn Tyra is glad to talk it through over a walk past the grassland. Let's Connect.