VOA慢速英语2009年-Agriculture Report - Little Lambs Eat Ivy

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Growers around the world are using new methods to grow grapes to make wine. These include natural and organic methods to control harmful insects and weeds instead of using chemicals. Now, a winery in Canada has imported a natural way to control its grapevines.

The Featherstone Winery is in southern Ontario. It has eight hectares of perfect rows of grapevines. The vines, like other plants, need to be pruned² every year.

In general, dead or living parts of plants need to be removed to improve the shape or growth of the plant. Pruning³ grapevines must be done very carefully. Only a targeted area of leaves is removed from the lower part of the vines to help the grapes grow better.
　
A lamb at work on the grapevines

But at the Featherstone Winery, no man or machine does the pruning. Instead, the job is done by forty cute, little wooly⁴ lambs.

(SOUND)

David Johnson owns the vineyard. He says he learned about using lambs while visiting wineries in New Zealand.

Mister Johnson says the young lambs are perfectly⁵ designed to do the job. They eat the grape leaves on the lower parts of the vine. But they are not tall enough to reach the grapes.

They only weigh about twenty-two kilos, so they do not beat down the soil. And their waste makes good organic fertilizer. In addition, using the lambs costs much less than hiring workers to prune¹ the vines for seven weeks in the summer.

And when the pruning is done in August, the lambs -- well, you might not want to know this part. They become lamb chops. Tasty ones, says David Johnson.

He says he had a difficult time finding enough lambs to do the job. There are about fifty million lambs in New Zealand. But there are not nearly as many in Ontario. Also, even some organic pesticides⁶ are harmful to lambs. And the lambs must be supervised so they do not prune too much.

David Johnson says the lambs carry out his environmental ideas about farming. He says the lambs are lovely and peaceful and he likes having them in his vineyard. People visiting the vineyard also enjoy watching the lambs do their job.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. It was produced by Joyce Kryszak with support from the Park Foundation and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation. You can hear more stories and subscribe⁷ to the daily podcast at environmentreport.org. And you can find more of our Agriculture Reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Mario Ritter.

1 prune   

n.酶干；vt.修剪，砍掉，削减；vi.删除

参考例句：

• Will you prune away the unnecessary adjectives in the passage?把这段文字中不必要的形容词删去好吗？
• It is our job to prune the side branches of these trees.我们的工作就是修剪这些树的侧枝。

2 pruned   

v.修剪（树木等）( prune的过去式和过去分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分

参考例句：

• Next year's budget will have to be drastically pruned. 下一年度的预算将大幅度削减。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The roses had been pruned back savagely. 玫瑰被狠狠地修剪了一番。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 pruning   

n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分

参考例句：

• In writing an essay one must do a lot of pruning. 写文章要下一番剪裁的工夫。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• A sapling needs pruning, a child discipline. 小树要砍，小孩要管。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

4 wooly   

adj.毛茸茸的；糊涂的

参考例句：

• I like the feel of this cloth and it has a warm wooly feel.我喜欢这块布的手感,它摸上去毛茸茸的很暖和。
• He wore a brown t-shirt with jeans and a pair of shoes,with a wooly hat covering his hair.小贝身穿一件棕色t恤，搭配牛仔裤和皮鞋，头戴一顶盖住头发的羊毛帽子。

5 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

6 pesticides   

n.杀虫剂( pesticide的名词复数 )；除害药物

参考例句：

• vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
• There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 subscribe   

vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助

参考例句：

• I heartily subscribe to that sentiment.我十分赞同那个观点。
• The magazine is trying to get more readers to subscribe.该杂志正大力发展新订户。