Last fall we had all of the seventh graders from University Prep out to do some blackberry removal, and they enjoyed it so much they came back with the whole school! Around 200 students and faculty came out for about an hour and a half and they dug up almost 10,000 sq.ft. of blackberry root balls! They also cut and raked another 3500 sq.ft. of blackberry canes. The week before the event, our SYEP crew and regular weekday volunteers worked hard to prepare the area for the shovel-wielding army of youth. We cut and raked our way through a huge and inaccessible area filled with blackberries and trash, and we left all the root balls for the big event.
The area near Riverview playfield was muddy in places, but the rain held out just long enough for buphalo to give a quick introduction to our restoration project and a safety talk about tool usage, and for Uni Prep to spend an hour digging up hundreds of root balls and yelling, “Death to blackberry!” Ben Smith toured around the site with his clarinet and led the youth out of the field at the end of their time with us. He continued serenading us while we sorted the tools with our SYEP crew, with a brief pause for buphalo to lead a thank you speech and a giant group pat on the back.
