The Forest Guild

Most of the time we have our arborist friend Kreg climb and take a good portion of a tree down. Often we have him leave a good portion of the trunk for animal habitats… Which is what we had done with this tree. However Jay decided it was finally time for it to go… as we needed that part of the land.

I have written about how we have been plagued by blackberries in many blogs in the past…

In 2016 when we bought our homestead, the blackberries hid the fact that there was an old heritage orchard on the overgrown property… It was a very happy surprise, but, what a mess it was. We had thick canes well up into the canopies of the fruit trees. We tackled them with gusto, but… they grew back with just as much gusto. We have heard that Himalayan blackberries can a grow a foot a day, though we have never taken a measuring tape to it, I can confirm that it is extremely aggressive.

Had I known then, what I know now, we would have worked in much smaller chunks and not tackled it all at once.

Years later we added fainting goats to the property to keep on top of them, but, they don’t eat the thick canes, and we haven’t had the same success of eradicating the blackberries as we have experienced with the pigs.