Monday, December 31, 2007

Farming is gardening

Who said farming isn’t gardening

Farming is a lifestyle. Take Christmas day. Father, brother-in-law and I spent about an hour pulling a new weed.

This one is called Despina(sp?) Pea. It’s a short thing, 3 to 4 feet. Well I’m not sure how tall it gets, isn’t that the aim of weeding. You don’t get to see how tall it gets or what colour its flower is.

First time I saw it was last summer, my bother and I pull one patch (unrelated to this years patches).

As an invader, where did it come from? We think its seed was in some hay, brought onto the place as drought feed, 12 to 24 months ago. Given its spread and amount, it must have only been in one load of hay.

It’s also been spread a bit from one of our stock feeding spots. We’ve been cleaning up some re-growth, before the election. This appears to have spread some seed too.

We’ll either get it all or we won’t. If we don’t, we’ll keep hand pulling the stuff until it’s to big a job. Then we’ll move onto other strategies. Hand pulling will put this of for years. That’s good economically and ecologically.


Gnoll110

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