Our Worst Weed

... Is about ready to bloom right now. That's a blessing, an opportunity, and a problem.

The weed is canada thistle. No, it's not from Canada. It's actually from somewhere in eurasia, like many of our other invasive plants. It's been a pest in the US for hundreds of years. It's a noxious weed in many states, and on our farm. We don't know if our problem came from the roadside, where it's growing in much of our area, or from our manure source, where you can also see lots of it.

It has its benefits. It helps to deal with compacted soil, which ours is a bit. Canada thistle grows well in rich, compacted soil, and its wide net of fairly thick roots can help to aerate the soil, if you can manage to kill the weed! Besides that, it's a terrific bee forage. About the only really good things about canada thistle and spotted knapweed are that bees love them. I hope our bees get their fill fast, because I intend to cut all of our thistle off at the knees the first chance I get.

And there's the opportunity. One of the best organic ways to deal with canada thistle is to get it to just before it blooms and cut it off or rip it up. The roots send almost all the energy of the plant into producing those flowers, so cutting it at this time makes sure you've weakened the roots as much as possible before you go after it more. You don't want to wait until the blooms open, however, or you run the risk of the flowers getting pollinated. It's not good for bees for nothing. Luckily, the plant spreads only weakly by seed, so cutting it after it sets seed isn't as bad as it could be.

And then there's the problem. My 7' sickle bar mower is broken. Darned thing sheared an internal pin while I was cutting thistle. It was both my fault and a previous owner's. It was my fault because I was trying to back the mower while the blade was still going. Dumb. It was a previous owner's fault because someone had disassembled the drive shaft before and didn't put back the key that was supposed to go in the shaft keyway. So this 5/16 pin was the only thing holding the shaft to the belt pulley. It's doubly annoying because this mower has a slip clutch that's supposed to slip in this situation, and has before. But that day the pin sheared instead. Nuts.

And to make matters worse, I can't get the remnants of the pin out of the drive shaft. I'd have the mower working again already, but the darned thing won't come out. I've tried whacking away at it with a punch and mallet, spraying PB Blaster into it and pounding away at it, and finally hitting it with a torch to soften things up and trying to pound it out. A broken chunk came out, but most of it is still in there. So next I try a better shaped punch and drilling it out.

My fall-back option is to cut it the way we used to, with a 3.5' wide, walk-behind sickle mower. That takes about 6x as long to cut the same area. And I have about six acres that I need to cut, including about two acres with canada thistle.