Gift Of Less

While I was away from the farm, Mike and Marilyn were busy cleaning up areas around the farm in preparation for winter. One of those jobs included the row of blackberry bushes that line a very old fence row near the bridge that crosses the river. The bridge span is 90 feet across and the row of blackberries was a lot longer than that.

Over the years, the row of berries grew in width and in length. About five years ago, Mike used the bulldozer to narrow the row by half and in the process re-established a ditch on the north side where the swamp drains down to the river during the winter months. I was very happy with the ditch and the half-row of berries. The berries seemed to like it also because they grew to an even larger size than before Mike scraped them back into a manageable size.

Tackling the job again, Mike not only took out half of the width but he also took out about half of the length. What is left is lovely, and he even found some of the very old fencing that had been buried for years.

We are still working on digging out that fencing that is three quarters buried with roots and deep silt from the floods, but a sharp shovel and a strong magnet is helping to find the metal bits that have broken off.

That job that was started while I was away will still take awhile to complete but I’m glad the hard part is done before the rains really set in.

As for the big pile of briars from the clean-out, it will still need to be burned so the berries do not re-root and cause problems in other areas, but that will wait until the really wet days of winter.

I am so excited to share some news about our little town. A local author has collected a wide variety of stories, poems, artwork and photographs from many people of the area and has published a book. It is now available at Amazon, you can click the picture to see more info or shop as you normally do. I get credit if you access the company through my link and I may make a small commission if you purchase anything without a cost to you. Thank you for supporting my stories and my community