Gorse attack
Home » Blog » Judy Sutherland » Gorse attackIn the latest update from the hill, Judy tackles the scourge of all Kiw farmers: gorse. Surely she must be a real farmer now.
I have mentioned the views from our hill. As one faces the sea to the north, on your left one can see the ranges and over your shoulder is the mountain (a wonderful sight when it chooses to appear!). We won’t mention the derelict sheds, rusting vehicles, motorbikes and other junk to the right that we have been told “will be moved”.
As yet, I haven’t mentioned another 'asset' we purchased with the hill. Unlike the junk this extra came with no promises to be removed. However, novices that we are, we convinced ourselves that it wouldn’t be a problem. Exercise is good for us, we have the tools; we may just have to forfeit a game of golf or two or a Sunday drive with Mother.
So, while admiring the distant views, if one lowers one’s eyes one will see an abundance of a certain imported shrub growing in abundance. This shrub, I have read, will produce 8,000 seeds per year, many of which will survive for well over 30 years in the soil. Sounds great if that’s what we desire to raise on our hill. No surprises to learn that it’s not!
You guessed it, we are looking at a multitude of gorse bushes on the western and northern slopes—not even many pretty yellow flowers, at that!
Well, what do we do with all this gorse? We simply attack it with a chain saw, stack it and burn the stacks. Easy, fun and weight-decreasing, too!
Day one of Gorse Attack. A fine Saturday afternoon. Hubby Jim and I arrive in shorts, t-shirts and gumboots. I have a pair of little-used garden gloves, Jim has some cheap five-in-a-pack handy-man gloves. Chainsaw is oiled, fueled and ready to go. Shall we start at the top and work down or start at the bottom and work up? Not a hard decision, we drive the 4WD round the track, past the rusty heaps to the bottom of the hill.
Chainsaw is fired up, gorse is attacked and drops. Judy jumps in to clear first bush away. “Ouch! That pricked my leg!”
Lesson #1: Wear long trousers when cutting gorse.
Judy reaches in with hand to drag cut bush away. “Ouch! That pricked my hand!”
Lesson #2: Cheap garden gloves are not suitable for grasping thorny gorse bushes.
With immense additional care, delicate removal of gorse continues. Jim chainsaws through the annoying shrub, Judy tentatively grasps non-prickly part of stem, drags and dumps—in a pile as much as possible.
Now some bushes have grown to sizeable shrubs. Reaching in to grasp stems without being assaulted is not an easy task. If one manages to avoid being pricked on hands or arms by offending spikey limbs then they are determined to attack the next vulnerable part of one’s body—the head. I could imagine rivulets of blood coursing down my face, my hair a mass of sticky red tentacles, the ouch factor as water and shampoo hit my scalp and found the offending puncture wounds.
Well, maybe I was being a little dramatic in my imagination, but the assault on my head certainly taught me lesson #3: Wear some head covering when clearing gorse. Hubby Jim, I noticed, was wearing a cap and, though he was more in the “firing line” of the barbs, his face and hair remained bloodless.
One hears so often how quickly time passes when one is having fun. Well, Jim and I must have been rollicking in it as three or so hours passed by before we realized what busy little bunnies we’d been! We had cleared a swathe of hillside, piled scruffy, prickly weeds into burnable matted mounds, sweated a few ounces of H2O and maybe even burned a few grams of unwanted body matter as well.
But that cup of fluid refreshment beckoned … or maybe something a little more cooling …
Yes, my body did sting as I relaxed in a welcome shower. No, cleansing of hair did not reveal sticky red substance gurgling down the drain. But the shock arrived the following day when arms and legs sprouted pink dots—multitudes of them! 'Gorse pox' covered every inch of my body that had been exposed to the dreaded pricks.
Oh well, lessons were learned, and I don’t think I lost any friends during my alien appearance!
Mon June 01, 2009 @ 07:44 PM
