Blackberry Pruning

With the last of the fine weather (by which I mean, brisk but clear and not raining) we finally tackled the blackberry patch.

The kids really enjoy pruning, actually. There is something inherently fun about snipping branches off of living trees with pruners or loppers. It all started on Tuesday afternoon with Seppi and Daddy trying to get some work done in the last few hours of daylight.

Daddy wanted to put in fence posts to support tree guards, but Seppi as usual wanted to dig.

There is a difference between running a farm, and running a farm with kids. With kids very often the real victory is not so much getting the work done. More often the real victory is working with the kids in a way that they enjoy, and leaving the rest in God’s hands, regardless of how behind you find yourself. We get a lot of practice in that around here, so perhaps it is fortunate we do not rely on the farm for our income.

What this means in a practical sense is that if the kids show a preference for one of the many jobs that always needs to be done, prioritize doing that job with them while they are in the mood, save the other jobs for when they wander off to play legos or something.

So we digged. We dug out an old josta bush that had become completely overgrown by some variety of wild blackberry, and tossed it on the burn pile.

Victory!

Then we got back to pounding fence posts but Seppi… still looked longingly at the huge Josta bush, like a kid with a pair of clippers looks at a bush.

So I paused the posts and let him have at it.

Unfortunately the bush is so old and tangled, and the oldest branches that needed thinning were so large, Seppi couldn’t cut through most of them with the loppers, so we had to go get a saw.

Evie took over the sawing for a bit, but it is pretty strenuous, she was only able to get through a few branches.

Instead she mostly cleared the branches Daddy cut out.

This was a branch that had been hanging down and was buried under the wood chips last fall. It liked the environment, apparently, because it started taking root. Ellie thought that was super cool.

We started working on the blackberries, but ran out of time, so we sent the older girls to knock out the chores while Seppi and Daddy finished the fenceposts.

Big man!

Now it’s time for soup!

Back at it on Thursday, these blackberries are the “black satin” thornless variety that came with the farm.

How do I know they are “black satin” do you ask?

Found this wrapped around the base of an old fruiting cane.

Pruning blackberries is essentially a matter of removing last year’s (mostly) dead fruiting canes to make room for this year’s fruiting canes, and getting the fruiting canes under control, pruned and tied at a level to facilitate easier picking.

Some of the shoots were seriously 12 or 15 feet long! That’s a little bit ridiculous.

Evie took over the last half of the first row and pruned it beautifully all by herself.

Ellie wanted nothing to do with the job, until I gave her a turn with the loppers.

Then she was all about it.

The rows were left in a bit of a tangle last year, so we were removing a mix of two and three year old canes. Some of them had woven their way in and out of the other canes (as is the way of blackberries) and these took some serious yanking to remove.

Ellie is not setting those loppers down for a second. She knows Seppi is eyeing them and wants to grab them for his own “work” (mostly just willy-nilly snipping branches on the burn pile.

“But I’m building a house! I need them! You are making my roof too squished!”

“Don’t go in, Ellie, the floor is covered with ashes!” Of course, he would be building a house in the middle of a burn pile over a bonfire site.

A couple of wild type blackberries with thorns were trying to get established. These we dug out, although I was amazed at how deep the roots went on this one.

Poor Winnie-Win. Her little fingers are cold, and Daddy was moving around too much to warm them up. But then she figured out how to put them in her pockets and after that, they didn’t come back out for the rest of the day.

About 2 1/2 hours of work, job well done!

Thanks to this intrepid crew!

Post-pruning meal at Chick-fil-A!