Thursday, July 5, 2012

In Recollection: Water Chestnut Pulling

Hello readers!

It's been a couple of busy weeks at CRWA!

Last Sunday was the first public water chestnut pulling event. Thinking I was in a for a fun day of community (or river) service, I told Anna, our water chestnut coordinator, that I would be happy to help out at the event. Little did I know that water chestnut removal was back-breaking, hand-aching work. Here is a list of things I learned during the weed pulling event:

1. Water chestnuts really do form thick mats with long root systems that are often  tangled in other plants' root systems. In other words, when one attempts to pull out a single water chestnut plant, many other plants are pulled up with it. In some cases, the water chestnut "chains" were so long that one pull filled an entire basket.

2. Water chestnuts are very sharp. If one does not wear proper protective garments (sturdy shoes and gloves) one can be scratched by the water chestnut fruits.

3. One bottle of water is not sufficient for a four hour weed pull

4. Weeding can, in fact, be fun.

I would like to thank all the volunteers who joined us on Sunday.  In hot, muggy weather, with the sun beating down on them, they worked hard to fill as many baskets of water chestnuts as possible. 

While water chestnut pulling is hard work, I encourage everyone reading this to join us on our weed pulling event on July 19th (click here for more information about our weed pulling program). I promise we will have a lot of fun and will see river-dwelling creatures, like great blue heron, turtles, fish, frogs, and birds.

Have a sunny week!
Cait

P.S. Photos of Sunday's event can be found on our Facebook page
P.P.S. The 2012 flagging (click here for more information) season started this week. I will be writing about that as the season progresses

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