BLACKBERRY PEST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18950, 23 February 1925, Page 14

BLACKBERRY PEST.

CLEARING A FARM. GOATS AS EXTERMINATORS.

BY NOV US.

We were standing at the top of a hill- { side covered with fresh green pasturo Only twelve months before it had beeu a wilderness of blackberry,—that aggressive scrambler, suggestive scrambler, suggestive to town-folk of picnics and jammaking, but to many a farmer suggestive of aching arms and heart-breaking struggle. " You have made a wonderful change!" I exclaimed to my friend. " However did you do it ?" Pleased at my appreciation, lie stopped and pointed out several roots of the past, among tho grass, cut almost level with the ground. " I had .to cut the plants first of all. Hero I did it myself, devoting a few spare hours to tho work every afternoon. In tho more accessible places, such as the flat down there at the foot of the hill, I had them. cut with a mower and raked into heaps with a hayrake. Then we set fire to the heaps and burned them. But so far," added my friend, " I was, of course, only following methods employed by most farmers who havo to grapple with the pest. Usually, however, the plants spring up and take possession again as quickly as they are cut, unless the farmer can plough and crop the infested area for several years in succession. That is generally impossible: it is beyond the means of tho settler who is trying to knock a living out of a rough backcountry farm, —and, besides, is quite out of the question on steep hill-sides. Even if the flats are cleared in this way, the sleeper slopes soon become again a thicket as tall and dense as ever, and form a stronghold from which the blackberry sets out to re-conquer its lost domain. Birds spread the seeds over the fields, and tho thicket itself encroaches on the odges of tho pastures with amazing persistence and rapidity. My success is due to a different method from that, a method which few seem to apply,—or, at least, to apply with sufficient throughness. With blackberry half-measures are useless." Goats, Sheep and Blackberries. " What is your method ?" I asked. " Simple enough", replied my friend. " Just stock, —concentrating sufficient stock on limited areas of the land to destroy the green shoots that spring from the old roots before they can grow to any size. Did you see' my goats ? They arc the boys!" "In the field by the gate? Yes. You must have hundreds." " I have at present three hundred sheep and one hundred and fifty goats. They are my blackberry-exterminators. I put them all, sheep and goats together, on to any area before shoots from the blackberry-roots grow bigger than straw-berry-plants. In this way the plants are prevented from making growth,—and they aro dying. I have not had to do any cutting at all this season. 1 feared that the plants might get ahead of me during their rapid-growing season, —but no! The sheep and goats kept them down, —shave them right off." " But the blackberry in the gullys ?' I asked. " Did you cut that ? It does not look as if you had. I see bare stems left there in most places, though the plants are but ghosts of what they were." " No." replied my friend. " That is the goats' special province. People do not realize goats' powers of destruction. Blackberry and gorse formed a seemingly impenetrable mass in every gully. I myself did not expect the stock to force their_ way into it. Yet when the goats had "been concentrated around it for a week or so they began to clamber over the thicket, in search of tender shoots on top; then to break it down and make tracks through it; and finally every trailing shoot of blackberry was stripped of leaves by my voracious friends, leaving mere skeletons in place of the once-flour-ishing bushes. When dry, a fire completed the destruction, and reduced gorse and blackberry alike to a few charred sticks; and now periodical concentrations of stock prevent the plants from shooting out afresh. Gorse, if tall, yields to burning quite well. This slope over here was a thick gorse-brake; but one hot, dry season I put a match to it,—and you see the result!" A Great Transformation. " The clearance in every part of the farm is wonderful," I remarked,—" arid the grass is growing so well." "Yes," said my friend. This hill side is cropped close now,_ but in the spring the grass was knee-high." " How many acres are there altogether in the property?" I asked. "One hundred and thirty,—but thirty of that is bush. You can see a piece of bush over there, and another there; arid there is a long strip fringing the river that skirts my back boundary." " You cannot winter all your stock on a hundred acres, though, can you?" I enquired. • ' No,—though I let them run through the thirty acres of bush as well. I dispose of about half the sheep before winter. Last winter I carried about one hundred and fifty sheep and a hundred goats, some forty head of cattle, and a half-a-dozen horses: and I had no extra feed at all. There were three stacks of hay on the farm, but I did not have to touch them. My sheep brought me in a good wool-cheque this year," added my friend. " It is a pity that goats are not productive of income like sheep," I remarked.

"Well," was the rejoinder: "I think they are. On the last place that I had, I bought thirteen goats at ten shillings each, and after a year or so sold forty goats at twelve shillings and sixpence each. That was not bad, was it? Goats multiply so rapidly: they breed three or four times in a year." I agreed that in the instance given goats had proved a very good investment, apart altogether from their marvellous powers of destruction; and I had to admit that, if always as remunerative, they would compare favourably with sheep as a source of income, even in these days of fat cheques for wool-growers. As we walked back together, chatting, to tho homestead, I congratulated my friend on his success, and couid not help expressing admiration at the way in which, in so short a time, he had conquered tho redoubtable blackberry and converted a wilderness into a smiling farm.,