Clearing Blackberries

While I have not measured it, I believe that the back portion of our property is about 1 1/2 acres.  Due to property boundaries and certain terrain and water drainage features, in order to get back to the back part of the property, I will have to install a culvert, and some amount of gravel to create a drive of sorts.

I have been able to find my way to where two drainage pipes open into a ditch at the bottom of a "valley" or low spot in the terrain.  My belief is that I will need to add a 12" culvert and probably two feet or so of gravel in order to create a "driveway" of sorts that will allow access to the back portion of the property in the confines of the property boundaries.

I order to get a clear view of what actually needs to be done, I need to clear the area where the drive to the back of the property would go.  Doing so requires that I clear a 60-70 foot swath of blackberries about 10-12 feet wide.  These blackberries are 8 feet tall in places, while the canes, tangled as they are, are often easily 20 feet long.  Blackberries are a pain, literally.

These blackberries grow and die in place, creating a thicket of thorns and tangled canes, both living and dead.  Removing this pain ridden thicket is not an easy task.

I started work on this clearing with hand tools.  These tools included a hand weed cutter with a serrated bar, loppers, hand pruners, and a fork.  Working from the outside in, I probably covered the easiest portion in about two hours.  If you look below, it doesn't look I accomplished much, but it was a good workout.  I covered about 15 feet of ground in a 10-12 foot wide section.  The good news is that so far, the ground is pretty level.  There will be a drop off, but I am hoping that it is confined to a pretty narrow area, which will minimize both excavation and gravel.

To clear more efficiently, I will bring in power tools, but will ultimately use a combination of power tools and hand tools.  A walk behind sickle bar mower will be used to sever the blackberries at ground level.  Perhaps a hedge trimmer or a machete will be used to cut a vertical slice through the sprawling, tangled canes on each side.  One of the challenging questions is how to progress from front to back through the tangled mess, pulling the tangled canes out.  Right now, I am thinking of the serrated weed cutter with about a 42 inch handle on it.  It will allow a reach back from the front, cutting downward from the top.  As this is cut, slice by slice will be removed with a fork, pushing back probably 18 inches at a time through the tangle.

I've thought about a walk behind brush hog, which may work well on some aspects of the project, but it would not work well on the vertical cut through the tangled mess on the sides, where the canes in the mess may be rooted in the area to be cleared, or 20 feet away.

I will learn from the process.  Mistakes will be made and I will learn from the mistakes as well as from what went right.