Buckthorn Busting

Went to help RBG staff remove buckthorn from its property near McMaster University on Sunday. Crossing the 403 on the way there.

Buckthorn is an introduced plant in North America, that is classified as an invasive species. It out-competes native plants for nutrients, light, and moisture, partly because the leaves and roots emit a substance that is poisonous to the roots of other plants. Similar to black walnuts and sunflowers which also have this allelopathic feature - severely reducing the plant population growing beneath them. It contributes to erosion by shading out other plants that grow on the forest floor. It lacks “natural controls” like insects or disease that would curb its growth, and serves as host to other pests, such as crown rust fungus and soybean aphid.

It’s easily identifiable in fall because while most other trees have already shed their leaves, its egg shaped green leaves remain on, the leaves appear opposite one another, like outstretched arms and also its pea sized black berries.

I brought along some tools. They provided some tree pulling tools called Extractigators, some devices to girdle a tree to big to pull, some shovels (a bunch of native vegetation was planted), a couple of crappy hatchets. I brought along my kukri. Have I mentioned that I love my kukri? I do. As much as I love it though, I don’t get nearly as many chances as I would like to use it. Walking down the street with it strapped to my belt during my day to day affairs would likely mean frequent conversations with police officers. I can move very deftly through very rough terrain, so it isn’t like I would use it then to hack and slash at vegetation. I try to be very low impact on my camping trips, and if I do use my BushBuddy, a few handfuls of gathered dry twigs suffice.

So when knowledgeable biologists grant me permission to exterminate specified trees with gleeful abandon - hot diggety! Any buckthorns under an inch or two in diameter could be pulled from the ground, roots and all. Anything much bigger than that, was girdled, in order to kill it. I used my kukri to hack a circle all around it.

Chips flew. Razor sharp and hefty, and with strong, controlled swings, if I had wanted to take the whole tree down and not just remove an area of bark, it would have been quite easy.

Several times I saw people futilely flailing away with one of the axe shaped lumps of steel with a handle on it, trying to remove stubborn roots. I went over and with one swing severed the offending root. 

After doing that a few times, I realized I could use it as a spokeshave, and easily and quickly sliced off foot long strips of bark and cambium. Did dozens of trees that way. 

I also brought along my Leatherman Vista which I used in this instance, but the kukri was more fun.

Had lunch around a campfire. We roasted weenies, but putting my hands near the heat wasn’t fun so I grabbed some split logs (bottom left) and put the stick in between two of them and let them do the holding. Fun bunch of people, gorgeous weather, nice location, some exercise, good cause. Perfect day.

The spot where we removed buckthorn.

Afterwards I sauntered home at a leisurely pace through the gorgeous fall landscape. Too nice a day not to.

Prune’mups

I find pruners to be a really handy tool to have out in the bush. For gathering up fire wood (which for me is invariably just dry branches from the bottom of trees), for helping clear away some foliage for setting up a hammock, for clearing a path through some really gnarly terrain when bushwhacking, or when foraging for wild food, I find them an indispensable tool. I’ve even been up to my waist in water when exploring up creeks on canoe trips, clearing obstructions out of the way with them.

Carrying them in a pocket doesn’t work, having to take off a pack every time you need them gets very long in the tooth after a while. The best solution I’ve found is to have them accessible in a pouch.

I used the Felco #8 shears for a long time. While absolutely superb pruning shears, the Leatherman Vista pruners were more compact and offered several tools in addition to the pruning shears for the same weight. I like the saw on it in particular. If I forego taking along the Bahco Laplander, this little saw is a passable substitute for most minor cutting tasks. I don’t at this point in my life have much use for the choke tube tool, I haven’t had cause to use the awl (although it is a pretty wicked looking example of one),  I would likely only use the knife if I lost the much better one I was carrying elsewhere. My only real gripe about it is the lack of a lanyard hole. I consider this to be a serious design flaw. Any outdoor tool should have a means of attaching a lanyard to it. What I may do is sacrifice the decent, but I-can-live-without-it Phillips screwdriver and grind it down, drill a hole through it and attach a lanyard that way.

This is the pouch I made for it.

Like the Saw’mups, this is also a design that utilizes a length of webbing to form both the back of the pouch and the flap. The body itself is made from 1000D Cordura. And like the Saw’mups it utilizes a surface mount side release buckle for the closure.

The webbing is a double length folded over, which allows the mounting hardware of the surface mount buckle to be hidden away.

The edge tape along the opening protects a high wear area.

There is a drain hole on the bottom to allow water to drain out, but I extended the webbing from the buckle to cover it to try and prevent all sorts of crud from working its way into the pouch through there.

Oh yes, and this whole thing was sewn by hand on the daily train commute.

The back showing the PALS webbing. While this tool is often carried alone, the idea was for it to be mated with the Saw’mups.

Nothing really innovative about either this pouch or the Saw’mups, but they were fun to make, use some techniques I haven’t used before, and are a solid way to carry these two tools on my adventures.

Prune’mups & Saw’mups combined

While the Saw’mups and Prune’mups can both be carried separately, the general idea was that they be carried in tandem.