Video report by Lucia Adams

Everyone's going green these days, so how about using a farm animal to clear that patch of weeds in your paddock rather than a petrol or electric mower? With this in mind, I decided to pit a strimmer against a sheep at Mudchute Farm on the Isle of Dogs in East London. At first the contest looked like a walk in the park: how could Harley, the farm's rare-breed Oxford Down ram, compete against the latest technology? Simple: he never tires. I got bored of strimming after half an hour, but he was still chomping away hours later as the sun began to set.

That said, there are pros and cons to owning a sheep. You can't simply switch them off, dump them back in the shed and forget about them; you have to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops before you can even put them on your land. You need a county parish holding (CPH) number for your strip of land from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and a unique herd number. Then you have to apply for a movement licence: the white copy goes to the local authority (and within three days, or you're in deep trouble), the pink copy goes to the destination, the yellow copy stays at the point of departure, and the blue copy is for the haulier. Phew...

Then there's nettles: sheep eat them only as a last resort, when they've exhausted every blade of grass in the field. Strimmers, though, eat them for dinner (of which, more later). While Harley had his nose deep in the lush grass, I was busy blitzing every nettle in sight with my Bosch cordless strimmer, which was strangely satisfying. This machine is a lightweight, effective weed-masher, but it does have one drawback: it lacks a safety catch, which would have been useful when I took it on the Docklands Light Railway. I set it off by mistake when I grabbed the handle, reducing the Machine Mart plastic bag to shreds.

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So what was the view of Tom Davis, the Mudchute's farm manager: sheep or strimmer? “It depends how committed you are to being green,” he says. “You can use a strimmer and just bung it back in the box, but sheep need checking twice a day - they need maintenance. There's more to it than meets the eye.”

The eye, though, is just what makes sheep such an attractive prospect if you own some rough pasture. Which is a more bucolic scene: a flock of sheep grazing in the distance or some ugly metal monster making a racket?

For Tom, there's no contest. “I'd go for sheep every time,” he says. “They turn grass into body mass - a strimmer just throws it to the side and it goes to waste. A sheep also fertilises the pasture. Best of all, you can eat them.”

You certainly can. How about “Oxford Down lamb chops with puy lentils”? £8 in the Mudchute farm café - delicious.

HERO'S VERDICT: The strimmer was the winner, but you can't eat it for dinner.

Bosch ART 26 Accutrim cordless strimmer: £64.61 at Machine Mart, machinemart.co.uk . A six-month-old sheep costs from £30 at your nearest livestock market. Mudchute Park and Farm: 020-7515 5901, mudchute.org

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