The long acre or long paddock is a traditional term for wide grassy road verges. In some places, such as Australia, New Zealand and parts of the British Isles, rural roads are often separated from adjoining paddocks and fields by both a hedge or fence and a wide grass verge. Rather than leaving this verge fallow, farmers often tether livestock on it to use pasture feed (in the form of the grass) that would otherwise be wasted.
Historically, the long acre was also grazed by herds or flocks moving from place to place, either on long journeys, or from one small local field to another. The long acre provided an important resource for such flocks and herds, perhaps forming a significant part of a small farmer's pasture.
In Australia, the most common method of keeping grazing stock off a road is by the use of a portable electric fence, visible to the stock and to passing travellers as a single white tape.
The use of the long acre as pasture has sometimes become formalised. For example, in parts of England, some has been registered as common land.
Famous quotes containing the words long and/or acre:
“It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said, and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)