Here’s something to chew on

The town has recruited a half-dozen goats to keep a public meadow trim and tidy. Taxpayers will not be charged a penny, and the four-legged lawnmowers will be treated to an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of grass, brush, and other growth that is threatening to overrun the Virginia Hammond Reservation.

If the experiment succeeds, town officials want to make more public parkland available with an open invitation to other grazing animals.

“Everyone benefits,’’ said Bob Decelle, special projects manager for the Andover Conservation Commission. “The town benefits, the goats benefit, and the environment benefits.’’

The goats will come from the yard of a nearby resident, who plans to walk the animals to the 3-acre meadow each day, herd them inside a temporary fence she will provide, rotate their grazing around the pasture, and bring them home at night.

“They’re very good browsers,’’ said Lucy McKain, who owns the animals and is leader of a 4-H dairy goat club. “It’s a win-win. It’s pretty neat.’’

With money tight and other projects needing attention, the town could not afford to spend on the heavy equipment, fuel, and labor required to clean up and maintain the meadow, a popular destination for hiking, bird-watching, and cross-country skiing.

But the goats might clean as much as a half-acre every three days, for free.

“Economic times force creative ideas,’’ said Gail Ralston, a member of the Conservation Commission.

The notion that an upscale town like Andover would pinch pennies by using goats as groundskeepers might seem surprising. But Sarah Sycz, museum educator at the Andover Historical Society, sees no contradiction.

“I think that because it’s an affluent town, the people here have the luxury of being green,’’ Sycz said. “I think people are more open to that concept.’’

The why-not attitude was embraced by Jack Schwing, 78, and Tim Jackson, 70, as they stood at the town’s leaf compost site near the entrance to Hammond Reservation.

“They’ll keep the grass down,’’ Schwing said of the goats.

“I don’t think it’ll take many,’’ Jackson added.

Indeed, grazing contentedly on Essex County flora, day in and day out, would seem to be a gift delivered straight from goat heaven.

McKain, who sells goat milk and serves it to her family, said the Hammond diet will improve the milk’s nutritional content.

“It’s important for ruminants to get back to their roots,’’ McKain said, referring to animals, like goats, that graze and chew cud. “You’re increasing their diverse plants and wooded material and shrubs, which will help them to naturally feel better.’’

The goats, which McKain said are smart enough to recognize their names and can be trained like dogs, will also help the meadow look better.

The pasture at issue in Hammond Reservation forms a lush, grassy oval surrounded by forest on three sides. A narrow trail leads from the road down a hillside and along thick, matted grass.

But nearly everywhere a visitor looks, the grass is being overshadowed and overtaken by plants, bushes, and small trees. A community garden, abandoned years ago, was once planted there.

Catherine Williams, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Agricultural Resources, said officials there could not point to another Massachusetts community that uses goats to cut its grass. Goats, she said, have the added advantage that they “will eat anything.’’

That lack of culinary discrimination makes them ideal for the Hammond Reservation, said Robert Douglas, the town’s conservation director.

Unlike sheep, the goats will munch on the coarse and tall vegetation that has been spreading across the hillside meadow. If no action is taken, he said, the space could be lost as many Massachusetts meadows have, overtaken by advancing forests.

“There’s major ecological payback to having it stay as a meadow,’’ Douglas said. Songbirds, hawks, and nesting creatures such as mice, he said, all benefit from a meadow with forest on its edges.

The cheap labor of goats make the concept a no-brainer, Douglas said, particularly when municipal maintenance for an area like Hammond Reservation would be a non-starter in budget talks.

“It seems like a good idea,’’ concurred Antonio Rondon as he served coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop downtown. “What the goats leave behind will help the grass, as long as it doesn’t smell so bad that people won’t use it.’’

Officials hope to begin the experiment soon, with goats grazing in the meadow through fall, taking a break in winter, then coming back next spring and summer.

If the goats do their job, the Conservation Commission might let goats and other species roam and ruminate on other protected parkland.

“We would entertain anyone who would want to bring a herd of animals onto our properties,’’ Decelle said.