Clean up your (branch) mess

As a new farmer, and being who I am, I do a lot of dumb things, make a lot of mistakes.  Largely, this is from inexperience, but partly it’s because I’m often asking “Hm, what if I do it this way or that other way, would that be better?”  ​

Now, eventually, I would love to become a better farmer, making fewer mistakes, and having more success in terms of yields, quality, sales and so forth.  That being said, whenever I make a mistake, I learn something.  And because I like to learn, there is a little dopamine rush whenever I discover another error.  I am sure my husband will not be happy to read this, because this sequence - Do it that other way? Mistake. Learn. Dopamine rush - more or less guarantees that the mistakes will continue and drive him batty.

Future marital disputes aside, today, after feeding the chickens and letting the sheep out, I took my scythe and loppers and walked out to the back of the field, where the sheep have finished grazing for the year.  The task at hand was to do a quick scythe across the field to mow down any small bittersweet, creeping brambles, and multiflora rose that might have decided to give our field a whirl.  In another post, I wrote about managing bittersweet rather than the foolhardy attempt to eradicate it, and this scything was part of the program.  

Much of the field back there is looking pretty clean, but I did find one large patch of creeping brambles and bittersweet that looked like a great place to start.  I first took the loppers to a multiflora rose that had gotten a bit too large for the scythe.  Next came the scything.  Have I ever mentioned what a great movement scything is?  It is a full body swing, with focus to keep the blade of the scythe close to the ground, gratifying and freeing.  Almost everybody who has come to help on our farm who tries scything loves it.    It is a wonder that it more or less disappeared even from small farms (though even I understand that scything a 100 acre field is inefficient and not fun).  If you’re inspired, and want to learn, hop over to this excellent Swedish professional scyther’s Youtube channel (Slåttergubben)

I started at the edge of the patch, intending to go around in spirals and end up in the middle.  When you scythe with a right-hand scythe and you cut a row, the cut material ends up to your left in a long pile.  On your next pass, you don’t want to cut through that mess, so you pass to the right of the row you just cut.  One way to do that is to walk back to where you started after you finish your row, and begin the next row a bit over to the right, but you can also go around in a concentric circles. 

Things were going pretty well, when I hit a piece of wood.  Now, in the past few years, we have been cutting young oak trees at the back of this field for shiitake logs, and also pruning the blueberry bushes on the side.  We have made a few nice, tall piles of the branch cuttings, but many of the branches were simply tossed into the field.  The idea was that it doesn’t matter because the branches will decompose and add some organic matter.  This piece of wood that I hit had not quite decomposed - although it was nicely colonized by fungi.  I picked it up and threw it on top of one of the proper branch piles that was nearby.   A few scything strokes later, I hit another piece of wood.  That one went on the pile too.  Sensing a pattern, I looked around for some more branches in that area.  Sure enough.  In fact, going around this patch, I found that the entire area was loosely littered with half-decomposed branches, all of which I picked up and added to the concentrated brush pile.  It slowed down the scything but that was not the worst of it.  

What I realized was that the loose litter of branches corresponded exactly to the patch of bittersweet and ground brambles.  The addition of the woody debris, and perhaps the fungal activity that it engendered, had made that area more appealing to these interlopers and less fitting for grass.  Lesson learned!  Dopamine!  Woody debris in the field leads to a nice habitat for some unpleasant invasives, so you should clean up your branches whenever you produce them!

I felt so good!  I had learned something.  It was going to be good material for a little blog post.  I was getting some great exercise.  And I cleaned up a nasty patch of invasives in my field.  

Plus, as I found out online, including a lovely post by the Perfect Earth Project it turns out that woody debris, when it is a pile - as opposed to loose litter strewn about - is a great resource for attracting all kinds of wildlife: birds, snakes, insects, amphibians, and small mammals.  Tada!  Another experiment in the making - what happens if I pile up all these branches in a pile in the field?  What a nice morning.