The Problem is the Solution: Free Chicken Food
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| Chickens eating wild rose and blackberry leaves |
There’s a reason I call my place “Wild Blackberry Apothecary” — the wild blackberries are trying to take back our few acres. They are losing the battle in the fields as I mow regularly; however, everywhere I cannot mow, they gain a foothold — which means they then have the advantage! The garden is no exception. In fact, the good soil that I have created over the years lets them spread underground even more easily than in our native clay (and they are pretty dang good about spreading through that, too). An alternate name could have been “Wild Rose Apothecary” for pretty much the same reason — Rosa multiflora seems bent on competing with my wild Rubus — and rather successfully, too! And canes “chopped and dropped” from either will happily root on the ground with the cool Spring rains. So what to do? In the Spring when leaves are young and tender — feed them to the chickens! They are not fans of the leaves later in the season when they are bigger and tougher, but these early Spring leaves — they love them! I cut long brambles and weave them through the fencing of the chicken pen. This helps avoid them stepping on thorns, and I leave the canes there until they are dried up and no longer able to root. Happy chickens. Dead canes.
Of course, I never seem to be able to get them all, so later in the season I will cut back fruiting canes of the wild blackberries, and they will vigorously strip the fruit off of them — and again, I will leave the canes to dry.
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| Dried blackberry canes turned into mulch. |
But that is a large amount of pokey dried canes — how do you dispose of them? I use them as part of my mulch layer in my raised beds. My raised beds are short, so bunnies can jump in them — but they don’t like landing on a layer of prickly blackberry canes. And all the woodiness contributes to my soil becoming more like a forest floor over the years. Most of these will have lost their sharpness over the season and started their slow fungal decomposition. I used to chop them up to be the “browns” in my bacterial compost — but I found that I didn’t like working with compost that still had some pricklies in it! This method seems to be working well. I imagine over time this might spread diseases that blackberries are susceptible to, but I have not seen any evidence so far.
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| Partially eaten tomato still on the vine. |
So much wildlife here in my little slice of heaven — and I love them — but they do take a toll from the garden. As long as things are not moldy, pretty much any varmint sampled produce goes to very happy chickens. Adding any type of plant material directly to the compost without having first been digested by chickens in a last resort. Egg shells are dried and crunched up a bit so they don’t resemble eggs, and are fed back to the chickens. Too many eggs and not enough customers? Hard boil 3 dozen in the instant pot, mash, and feed back to chickens, shells and all. Scrambled eggs for dogs and only 1/2 ration of dog food. Not enough time to turn compost? Take 3 minutes to pile up and then toss some chicken food or treats on it — the chickens are more than happy to turn it and dismantle it. Too much rain? Save it for a dry spell. So many things can be used to our advantage if we just turned our perspective around and ask, “If this was a solution instead of a problem, what would that look like?”
Author's Note:
Wild Blackberry Apothecary is the dream of a one-woman homesteader in the middle of Middle Tennessee, USA. I currently work full time and homestead part time with 4 dogs, 12-30 chickens, several domestic blackberry and raspberry plants - and thousands of wild blackberry vines that are trying ot take over every inch that they can. My husband of 30+ years does not homestead, but indulges me. As we look towards our retirement years, we hope to further develop our property and perhaps add more rescue dogs, more blackberries and trees, and have me move to homesteading full time.
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