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:
“Nature creates while destroying, and doesn’t care whether it creates or destroys—as long as life isn’t extinguished, as long as death doesn’t lose its rights.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“... a family I know ... bought an acre in the country on which to build a house. For many years, while they lacked the money to build, they visited the site regularly and picnicked on a knoll, the site’s most attractive feature. They liked so much to visualize themselves as always there, that when they finally built they put the house on the knoll. But then the knoll was gone. Somehow they had not realized they would destroy it and lose it by supplanting it with themselves.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)