I know nobody is reading this. It doesn’t matter. Let’s talk blackberries. They are delicious when made into jams, jellies, pies, or any of the many other things that can be done with them, right? But when they get growing on a property they can take it over in just a couple of years. I hear that the south has kudzu and there’s poison ivy back east. There are invasive plants wherever you go. My battle is with invasive blackberries.

Himalayan Blackberries grow especially fast. They shoot up canes bigger around than your thumb and 30 feet long. They build on themselves to create mountains 14 feet tall or more if they have support. They are like a tidal wave washing over the land, starting fresh clusters with roots on the end of canes in the fall. Everyone told me that I should mow and then spray everything with herbicide to knock them down and keep them down. I’m not very fond of that idea. It’s tempting and easy, but I don’t like the dependence on poison. I also don’t have easy access to anything that can mow down mountains, and my good brush trimmer has been down for a couple of years. It broke and a helpful friend took it apart and lost the parts. One of these days the parts will turn up. Until then we get to use other methods.

My favorite tools in the blackberry war are simple hand held pruners, a Fiskars billhook, large pruning shears, a curved pitchfork, goats, and a cattle panel. I started out pretty complicated, but now I keep it simple. T-posts and cattle panels fence off an area that needs to be worked over. Then I go in with a single cattle panel, lean it up against the mound of growth that I want to take down, and climb. I’m not a dainty thing and this is one area where my weight is an asset. I jump and crush and smash the panel to the ground. I trim anything that keeps it from descending. Then the goats swarm. We like the berries, goats think the leaves are candy.

When the blackberries are crushed the goats will strip anything resembling greenery from them. Once that is done the canes dry out pretty fast. Then I can cut them close to the ground and rake them into piles for burning. There is a pile waiting in almost every area that the goats have worked. I could probably also let them just rot into the soil, but burning is more satisfying.

There is now plenty to burn. A year ago I felt like I was fighting a losing battle, but now that I have the hang of it we have cleared nearly to the midsection of the property. The only thing holding me back is goat containment. They have little respect for most fences, and my neighbor’s choices of fence are anything but goat-proof. There will have to be some fencing improvement in the near future.

Hey, look at that. Two posts in two days. It’s easier now that I remember that nobody is going to read this stuff. I have a lot more pictures of the blackberry war on Instagram. I joined that platform to share and follow quilty stuff, but instead I have ended up posting a lot of other stuff, including a takeover of the blackberry war hashtag. Feel free to check it out.