Pacific Northwest Gardening: Wild Blackberries, 0 by Poochella

Poochella wrote:
Soferdig is right. I used to tether our large goats out on a hill riddled with blackberries. But I spent alot of time disentangling legs from ropes instead of gardening. Pygmies are good at defoliating your cut down dahlias come November too. I think there is an outfit that has been used in W WA which hires out a herd of goats, complete with temporary fencing. They are farmed out to maintain power line right of ways etc. Might want to look them up since you have a big area. Here's an example of the goat way of clearing land.

http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=11590

That same hill was eventually bulldozed and what was choked by BBerries to an open lawn of only 30 ft, became an open swath of 60-100 ft. The dozer guy said once the grass seed established itself to just keep mowing any blackberries that sprung up; they would die eventually. Indeed they have and the hill remains open. I am constantly hacking back the peripheral blackberry vines that line the hillside however. Just one of life's little pains ( sometimes BIG pains if I drive by on the mower and don't notice a wicked stalk hanging in my path.)