I realized recently that I’m losing my battle with thistle in the pastures.  The flowers are a wonderful magnet for pollen-collectors,

but it’s growing so densely in some spots it’s starting to crowd out the sheep.

Thistle grows from a taproot, so I had hoped to be able to dig the plants, root and all, out of all the pastures, so they wouldn’t just regrow from the rootstocks next year. And I knew that I had to get this done before the thistle flowers started to go to seed,  which would doom me for years to come.  Despite help from friends, I wasn’t getting to it all, and now some of the flower heads are starting to set seed.

So I’ve abandoned my lofty ambitions of pulling out all of the thistles by their roots, and now I’m just cutting the damn things off at ground level with a brush saw.  I fear that every single root I’m leaving will set a new thistle next year, but I’m getting most of the plants before the seeds develop, so hopefully next year’s thistle problem won’t be exponentially worse.  And it does feel very satisfying to have clean pastures and a huge pile for the compost heap.