Relocating Br'er Rabbit (slowly)

The struggle against blackberry brambles continues at Finally Farm. This Saturday we made so much progress we couldn't believe our eyes at the end of the day. We could see ground, and walk across ground that we'd never been able to step on before. We revelled in our work a long while before going inside for the day.

In case you haven't followed our ongoing battle against the evil weed, I wanted to back out of buying this place the day I discovered that our 1/4 acre backyard (our hang) was thoroughly infested with years-old blackberry brambles.

How could a nemesis plant follow me from Seattle to Germany? I'd fought them for years back home and now it seems I'm destined to for the rest of my life.

The first thing I did back in Dec 2008, even before the house was officially ours, was to hack down the blackberries along the fenceline, so I could *find* the fenceline, so that eventually I could put up a horse fence. Some of the fenceline was covered in blackberries so thick I ended up with a tunnel through them. They were about 15 feet tall, hanging down from the trees, tangled in every living or dead thing.

I'll never forget the fisherman next door saying to me, "That's useless, you'll never win a fight against those plants." I said, "Well I have to build a fence here."

Then the cop next door said, "Give it up - I had my side completely blackberry free one year and now look at it. It's useless."

The hippies had obviously never cut them and they cannot walk through the lower half of their property, the blackberries are 10 feet tall or more in Summer.

But giving up would mean leaving a big part of our land unuseable, and constantly trying to maintain the edges to keep the fenceline clear. Being told not to try made me want to try harder.

I got my one meter wide path cut thru the brambles successfully that first year.

Ever since then my man and I have slowly and methodically cut, dug up, and removed blackberry vines meter by meter. You should see the piles of cut blackberries we have along the creek on the backside of our field.

My plan is to make a mighty wall of thorny yard waste that no horse nor child will dare pass through.

The first corner we finished looks great - it even sprouted grass instead of brambles or nettles. My man went through this entire section with a shovel and dug up all the blackberry roots.

Then this fall the fisherman must have felt guilty because I heard chainsaws and sure enough, he was ploughing through the blackberries on his side of our shared fenceline.
This is wonderful because if there's one thing worse than removing blackberries, it's removing blackberries that are not even your own, but hanging over your fenceline, shorting out your electric fence. I thanked him.

Then just last week the hippies had a work party and they went along our other fenceline with a chainsaw, machete, and rakes to dig up roots. Now BOTH our fencelines are clear! I thanked them.

Dec 2008 (our side of the fence facing downhill). The fence is unsuccessfully holding back a wave of blackberry brambles.

Today (leaning over the hippy side of the fence facing uphill)



My husband cut a path through the bramble chaos the entire width of the hang, and said it would be his goal to have everything on one side completely clear this year. You can see the path here in the middle.

I made a goal of my own, lengthwise on the chaos, and got down and started tearing up roots. I had 9 huge piles of just roots at one point, requiring about 12 garden sacks full to be carried down. The removal of the piles is actually a more dreadful task than the cutting, pulling, and digging. My husband and I have developed an understanding. Any pile I make has to be removed by me, and any pile he makes is his to carry away.

Our piles got buried in snow this winter but now is the perfect time to continue. Nothing is growing yet, and the ground is not frozen solid.

The 200 baby birch, beech, and elderberry trees can be thinned and trimmed to allow us to reach the ground better as soon as they have leaves. Many of these trees are horribly bent due to being constrained by blackberries. We're hoping once free they straighten again. The reason we've had to fence off this area is the trees are fragile and Baasha loves to rub on them and chew them. He has destroyed a few baby trees already. (This is also why we cannot have goats to help out.)

It looks pretty drab in color after a long winter. We look forward to the green grass on the ground and pale birch leaves this Spring, not skin-ripping thorns.

See that long log? We had no idea it was there, the brambles were so thick.

This is unbelievable to me, because just last year it was a meter-wide path along the fence, and then solid blackberries up to your face. We have new ground here, and I keep walking back and forth and around the little trees, simply because for the first time I can.

Now we stand back and admire our work and we try to reckon what percentage is completed. It looks like we've done 3/4 of our hang, but we cannot finish the remaining 1/4 because we will be working fulltime on roots we missed that will be sprouting soon. We have to prioritize. We already see the ugly pink heads of blackberries trying to surface. And the nasty bright yellow roots of stinging nettles are biding their time, I'm sure I could not get them all.

This is the "Chaos Quarter" left for future ambition. The blackberries are knee- and waist-high, after being pressed down by the weight of snow.

For now it is so nice to be able to walk where no one has walked in years, maybe decades. Mercer (top left) seems to enjoy it too. She accompanies us as we work, chasing leaves like a kitten. Our work is uncovering the homes of mice so she appreciates it.

As work progressed we would ask each other, "Do you think we'll be able to do this?" and now for the first time we have real hope that we can win.

Folklore related: Last night on Star Trek Picard acted like the rabbit. He was undercover and captured, and he said, "Oh no, don't send me to StarFleet, you know what they do to smugglers like me?" *lol*

Actual folklore:

"Drown me! Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."

"The briar patch, eh?" said Brer Fox. "What a wonderful idea! You'll be torn into little pieces!"

Grabbing up the tar-covered rabbit, Brer Fox swung him around and around and then flung him head over heels into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit let out such a scream as he fell that all of Brer Fox's fur stood straight up. Brer Rabbit fell into the briar bushes with a crash and a mighty thump. Then there was silence.

Brer Fox cocked one ear toward the briar patch, listening for whimpers of pain. But he heard nothing. Brer Fox cocked the other ear toward the briar patch, listening for Brer Rabbit's death rattle. He heard nothing.

Then Brer Fox heard someone calling his name. He turned around and looked up the hill. Brer Rabbit was sitting on a log combing the tar out of his fur with a wood chip and looking smug.

"I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox," he called. "Born and bred in the briar patch."

Did anyone else have this little record besides me?


Note: Some of these photos are not mine. I think it is easy to tell which: )