Omg I have been tweeting and moaning about this since we started the mammoth task of removing the ragwort on Sunday, it’s been one of those jobs I have been thinking about for the past couple of weeks. Not having had to deal with ragwort before.  It was something I knew of but I didn’t really know off., if you know what I mean.

Let’s just say never again will I not be able to identify a ragwort rosette in its baby form. Argh. Needless to say one of my fields is swamped with the dreaded yellow stuff.  And the others aren’t far from it. Luckily having enough grazing the horses haven’t been too interested in it. But I did notice lil miss spirit likes to lay and poop on it:-s

Which then kills of parts of the plant –ok some were more like bushes- and as I found out recently it’s then that the horses like to eat it. I’m not sure if she has been nibbling on the storks or not. But to be on the safe side I have moved them into another paddock while I clear the others. Boy what a task I had no idea it had gotten so bad.

Luckily I enlisted a couple of helpers, Steve help me make a start on Sunday (the boy wanted to help until he realised it involved doing something that wasn’t fun).  And then my friend came over yesterday with her ragwort fork to help tackle some of the bigger beasts.  We have made a good dent but there are still loads to do. I’m now left to chip away at it over the next few days. Once I’ve gone and got a fork of my own.

We then have to destroy the blasted stuff. If I thought the pulling up part was hard this bit seems to work my brain harder.  We have far too much to transport and besides I wouldn’t even know where to get paper sacks from to pack it in –you’re not allowed to use plastic ones apparently- plus you really don’t want to be moving it around too much.

The other option is to burn it, but for that it needs to dry out. But where do you dry it out as I’ve said it’s when its starts to dry out the horses like the taste of it.  We also don’t have a specific fire area, did I mention I hate fires they scare me. We do have a Bernie bin but I don’t think that is practical considering the amount we have.

So we are left with one option to burn it on the field, as you can tell by the pictures there is a really dense area of the blasted stuff, so the plan is to pull it up and pile it up there to burn at the weekend.  I don’t like the fact it’s only in the next field to the horses but at least there is electric fencing separating them. If I were to move it to the yard it would only be a matter of them getting past a very decrepit wooden fence.

So yeah it’s been a headache but I now have the bug and won’t rest until my fields are ragwort free.