Blackberry Hunt

Last Sunday I finally got my search and destroy blackberry mission underway. Only for a few hours, but begin I did and was most satisfied at the end of the day. It's something I enjoy, getting down on hands and knees, close to the earth, and crawling in under shrubs, hacking a tunnel with secateurs through wire grass and low growth on trees and shrubs to find the canes where they leave their roots, cut them off and paint the stump with straight roundup.

I think I enjoy it because you have to go slowly, deliberately, necessarily. Cut a few, paint the stumps, crawl in a little further. You can't cut a lot then paint later, you lose track of where the cuts were, and the roundup needs to be applied quickly after the cut or the plant begins to repair and seal itself the more seconds pass, making the roundup less effective. I use a small plastic bottle of roundup with a dabber sponge under the lid. I get them from the weed officer at Cardinia Council.

After two wet years and rampant growth, there was plenty for me to work with. I didn't do them at home last year, I did a lot at the farm. It's an ongoing thing, the small ones you miss become big ones in a year or two, and the birds always bring in seeds from outside anyway. They germinate and take root under shrubs and along boundaries where the mower or whipper doesn't go, and slowly and stealthily send out runners and build strength as they reach the light, then 'lookout' in spring as many feet of new growth appears almost overnight.

There's plenty of blackberries around the town for me look forward to a feed soon, but it's been so dry that without good rain much of the fruit won't develop into good eating. Each of the last four completed months, that is all of spring and December, provided about 60% of the 38 year average rainfall, and the three weeks of January, there's been nothing at all. Things are getting serious. The 30,000ltr tank at Hanna's that I use to water the vegies etc has about a quarter left. The tanks at the farm have been emptied twice and refilled by pumping from the creek but there's little water in the dam on the creek so we are greatly restricted.

Two weekends ago I managed to get a bit of honey off, not much though, it's another poor year. The honey is blackberry honey. There's a big paddock of mature blackberries west of here well within the range of my beehives. I saw it from Heinz's veranda in Station Rd while at his house a few weeks ago, interviewing him for 'Signpost'. It's in jars but already candied, such is the nature of it. Without the blackberrys there would have been zilch.

I walked around watering in shorts watering after I got home and the mozzies got into me. My feet and legs are itching to blazes. Pity it's an AF night, it could be hard for me to get to sleep.