Clearing land like a homesteader

On Saturday we did yard work.  It was one of those these-kids-are-really-paying-off sort of days.  Braeden dug out big scary looking stickery bushes and they all three cleared weeds like goats.  (Actually, they want a goat.  Then we'll have Horace the inside goat and an outside goat too, name to be determined.  Emma demanded I consider the option.)

I couldn't believe how much work we got done.  Maybe I felt a little overconfident because when Mark told me he wanted a vegetable garden, I promised we'd make one on Monday.  There's a patch on the top of the hill behind our house that's extremely fertile.  I can tell because of all the waist high grass and buttercup and blackberry bushes that grow there.

I told him we'd clear a spot and make him a garden.

We climbed the hill with gloves and tools and optimism.  We pulled out everything that was easy to pull out.  Then we started digging.  The thing about blackberries is that in addition to being extremely prickly and invasive, they have intertwined woody stems that meet each other underground in twisty impenetrable masses.  Also the big clumps of grass were shovelproof (at least for me).  We did a couple of feet--maybe half of what we were intending.  Mark said, "I say we call it a day and get back to this another time."

This will come as a shock to exactly no one, but I am sort of a wimp so I quickly agreed with him.  I am thinking we need Braeden or Adam or both of them.

Here's what we have so far:

I thought about all the men and women that have cleared land, removed stumps and boulders off of entire farms and I felt a little ashamed of my cowardly self and my lack of agricultural prowess.

Then I got over it and Mark and I went to Target.

We can't all and some of us don't.