When Beau Stafford started Wiscovery Farm in 2019, he never thought that five years later he’d become the first to graze sheep at a Dane County solar site. The Fitchburg farm started small with garden compost and small hay bales, and eventually got to the point where Stafford wanted to expand into livestock.

“Originally, I figured, ‘Maybe we’ll get some beef cattle, and they’d graze about in our pasture land,’” Stafford recalled. “Then, all of a sudden, we get a flier in the mail.”

The flier was about a public engagement meeting for a solar site planned near his farm Stafford went to an open house to talk with developers about concerns related to what they’d plant at the facility and how it might impact his farm. The conversation eventually turned to the idea of grazing sheep at the solar site. Stafford said that conversation got the wheels turning in his mind.

“As a kid, I helped raise lambs for the fair with my neighbor and I thought, ‘Well, I have experience raising sheep, not running a flock, but at least individual sheep,’” he said. “We have young kids, and we thought, ‘Maybe that would be a better route to go for livestock rather than doing cows or beef, because they’re pretty big and for little kids it’s not great.’"