which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2022-04-05 08:33 am
which_chick) wrote2022-04-05 08:33 am
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It's Barberry Season!
What with the green-up, it is barberry season again around these parts. I am out trying for 30 barberries per day after work. All barberries count as "A Barberry", whether they are single-stem babies 4" tall or twenty-stem monstrosities. So, thirty a day isn't that bad. I do like ten big ones and then a bunch of little wee ones.
I was out over the weekend playing barberry and broke my big clippies so I had to go to the hardware and get another pair. Freaking big clippies are forty damn dollars. Argh.
Barberry removal, for large-ish bushes, is a matter of stomping them to the side, shoving big clippies down into the dirt and lopping off roots, rotate around bush, stomp it to a new side, lop off more roots, repeat until all roots lopped, drag bush off and beat root crown on rock/stump/tree until most of the dirt is gone, hang dead bush in tree crotch or on fallen log or upturned stump or similar. Sometimes there is... er... off-label use of the big clippies in a prying manner. This eventually fatigues the metal in the handles of the big clippies and they snap off. I get about three years from a pair of big clippies and then they die. Doesn't seem to matter which brand I use, either.
I'm making headway on the patch above the swamp down past Fuller's cabin. I've been working on it for a couple of years and the end is in sight. I'm planning to move some anachronistic trees into the location once I get done playing with the barberry. (I have several in my fenced yard thing that need to be moved.)
For what it's worth, I'm not done playing with the barberry once the big shrubs are gone. I have to revisit every two years or so and pluck out all the teeny barberries that have sprung up from the seed bank in the soil. Two to three years is a good "revisiting" schedule because then they're big enough to see but small enough to pull out easily and also not big enough to fruit.
In other news, horse work area (the flat part of the hayfield) is now being occupied by a camper, a person, and three large bark-y dogs. The camper has no electric, water, or sanitary sewer hookup. Person is living there full-time for "about a year". I am... less than happy about this. Horse is also not entirely enthused, but he is going to have to get over himself because having folks in his work area is not an acceptable excuse for not-attending-to-the-task-at-hand. Focus, Bird, focus.
I'm going to walk the fenceline for Bird's playpen and hook up the electric fence again and migrate the horse food containment systems down to the chicken coop for summer quarters for Bird this coming weekend. I really want to build a fill connection for the water trough he has. Ideally it would have an air gap because hooking up the hose every day is annoying as hell. I'll do some thinking on that and see what I can come up with.
In other, other news, Rachael who was playing horse has vanished into the ether. Haven't heard from her since I broke my wrist. I've posted (not "at her" but she is friended) on fb about getting cast off and hopping aboard ponies, so presumably she is aware that I'm not broken anymore but it's still crickets over here. Oh, well.
I was out over the weekend playing barberry and broke my big clippies so I had to go to the hardware and get another pair. Freaking big clippies are forty damn dollars. Argh.
Barberry removal, for large-ish bushes, is a matter of stomping them to the side, shoving big clippies down into the dirt and lopping off roots, rotate around bush, stomp it to a new side, lop off more roots, repeat until all roots lopped, drag bush off and beat root crown on rock/stump/tree until most of the dirt is gone, hang dead bush in tree crotch or on fallen log or upturned stump or similar. Sometimes there is... er... off-label use of the big clippies in a prying manner. This eventually fatigues the metal in the handles of the big clippies and they snap off. I get about three years from a pair of big clippies and then they die. Doesn't seem to matter which brand I use, either.
I'm making headway on the patch above the swamp down past Fuller's cabin. I've been working on it for a couple of years and the end is in sight. I'm planning to move some anachronistic trees into the location once I get done playing with the barberry. (I have several in my fenced yard thing that need to be moved.)
For what it's worth, I'm not done playing with the barberry once the big shrubs are gone. I have to revisit every two years or so and pluck out all the teeny barberries that have sprung up from the seed bank in the soil. Two to three years is a good "revisiting" schedule because then they're big enough to see but small enough to pull out easily and also not big enough to fruit.
In other news, horse work area (the flat part of the hayfield) is now being occupied by a camper, a person, and three large bark-y dogs. The camper has no electric, water, or sanitary sewer hookup. Person is living there full-time for "about a year". I am... less than happy about this. Horse is also not entirely enthused, but he is going to have to get over himself because having folks in his work area is not an acceptable excuse for not-attending-to-the-task-at-hand. Focus, Bird, focus.
I'm going to walk the fenceline for Bird's playpen and hook up the electric fence again and migrate the horse food containment systems down to the chicken coop for summer quarters for Bird this coming weekend. I really want to build a fill connection for the water trough he has. Ideally it would have an air gap because hooking up the hose every day is annoying as hell. I'll do some thinking on that and see what I can come up with.
In other, other news, Rachael who was playing horse has vanished into the ether. Haven't heard from her since I broke my wrist. I've posted (not "at her" but she is friended) on fb about getting cast off and hopping aboard ponies, so presumably she is aware that I'm not broken anymore but it's still crickets over here. Oh, well.