Noxious Weed Busting

I once worked as a member of a "ground crew" whose assignment was the extermination of noxious weeds. The Nebraska State department of Agriculture has an official list of weeds it classifies as "noxious." Not every weed is noxious. For example, some familiar weeds, such as dandelions, are not.

To kill a dandelion is nothing. The noxious weed is a real opponent. You cannot kill a noxious weed with your bare hands. You need a weapon.

On my first day at work, I was introduced to Zane Roper, a seventy year-old man who had been fighting noxious weeds for decades. He gave me a terse introduction to noxious weeds and the weapons that would be at our disposal.

"We're going to spray Thistles today. You drive the jeep, and I'll walk behind with the gun. Don't get too goddamn far ahead of me. Take those jugs of 2,4-D. I'm going back for the long hoes and the keys to the loader; you fill the tank with diesel, put on these gloves, pour in two jugs and start the mixer. On the way out, remind me to tell you what Shattercane and Texas Sand Burr looks like. If Gordon comes by ask him what the hell we're going to do with the tree spade...."

I was overwhelmed by the terminology. "Long hoes?" Wasn't 2,4-D some kind of toxic chemical? The names of the weeds seemed particularly sinister. If Zane was going to carry a gun, would I be issued one too?

Every year, each of 93 Nebraska counties elects a Weed Control Deputy. The position is not one to be taken lightly—the Deputy's responsibility is nothing less than to ensure that it is people who rule in his county, and not noxious weeds. Travelling through Nebraska, one might conclude that it is entirely natural that corn should grow there. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Noxious weeds governed Nebraska for 50 million years before man arrived. The modern farmer has only recently driven the noxious weed into eclipse, and it requires all his ingenuity to keep the weed down.

The first Europeans, hoping to find arable land in the American west, had experienced weeds before: so they thought. They had given names to their European weeds to indicate their qualities—Shepherd's Hat, Dandelion, Mock Carrot. Finding a weed in his field, the farmer simply reached down and pulled it out. But when these weed-naive farmers arrived in the Great American high plains, they found the way completely blocked by weeds so horribly unfamiliar that a new genre of hellish names was invented for their description: Binding Grass, Witches Bristle, Shattercane, Musk Thistle, Texas Sand Burr. The agricultural journals kept at the time are filled with long passages about the horrible weeds. Farmers went bankrupt and starved, unable to conquer them.

Nebraska law requires farmers to keep their land free of noxious weeds. Although most succeed, there are inevitable delinquencies and pockets of weeds where even the diligent farmer is overwhelmed. Noxious weed control boards, governed by their deputies, are formed as a sort of agricultural Special Weapons and Tactics team.

Zane and I were just a small part of one team, working in one county, concentrating on one principal opponent: the Musk Thistle.

A stand of Musk Thistle may be briefly described as a cornfield in hell. Where sweet corn stands straight, green, neatly arranged in rows and wafting in the breeze, the Musk Thistle stands twisted, densely packed, spiky and rigid, with a hideous purplish eye at the top. A corn stalk may grow to nine feet; Musk Thistles can stand twelve. A naked man, standing amongst a few hundred Musk Thistles, could hardly hope to escape alive. He would be cut into fine slices in the attempt. It is a fertile weed: where 200 Thistles stood on Monday, 1000 might stand on Wednesday. There is no animal that can eat a noxious weed. Insects are repelled by them. All of modern agricultural technology is required to defeat just one.

To kill a Musk Thistle, I was to learn, one burns, poisons, and uproots it. All three operations are necessary. A burnt and poisoned thistle will recover. An uprooted thistle will reroot itself. One does not hope for victory over the Thistles. The best satisfaction comes in knowing that you have at least delivered them a blow.

Zane had been fighting them his entire adult life.

After we had loaded all the equipment, Zane paused for a moment and pointed at the ground beneath us. "Do you see that? That's a goddamn watermelon sprout. Looks the world like Witches Bristle, but it isn't. It's the sort of thing we're up against. Try to figure out what's a weed, and what isn't. It looks like a hot day. We'll have the miserable bitches curling by lunch."

I started the jeep and we pulled away from the Weed Shed, pulling 100 gallons of a highly toxic mixture of diesel fuel and 2,4-D. Zane had a crude map drawn on the back of a Malathion advertisement which was to direct us to the site of our first engagement with the Thistles. We had barely driven half a mile into the rolling ranch land when Zane raised his hand. It was his signal to stop the jeep.

"There's a Thistle," he said in a cool tone. He pointed ahead over the hood of the jeep. I saw a five-foot high stalk with the purple eye fixed on us, and was momentarily transfixed. Still, I gathered my courage and began to get out of the jeep.

"Where are you going?" Zane asked. "Run it over with the jeep, then I'll finish it off."

There were to be many times when I would turn to Zane in the jeep, admiring him; this was a man who knew how to kill a weed. I put the jeep into gear and plowed over the Thistle. Pausing triumphantly, I looked to him for my next orders. But Zane was already out of the jeep, standing silently over the now horizontal thistle. He held a freshly-sharpened long hoe in his hand. By the time I had gotten out of the jeep, Zane was working violently over Thistle, in apparent victory yet striking at it sharply with the honed edge of the long hoe, splitting its stalk into dozens of fragments. The original plant was unrecognizable in the pulp of stalk, ooze and thistle-points. Still Zane seemed unsatisfied, and he pointed to the 100 gallon trailer we pulled behind the jeep.

"Damn serious," Zane said quietly, "and about to go to seed. Start the sprayer." He pointed at the tank we pulled behind the jeep. It fed a special spraying gun that was pressurized by an additional engine at the back of the jeep. On Zane's signal I threw a lever, and he sprayed the near-dead Thistle. Later, on larger stands of weeds, I would move in his perimeter, striking as many thistles as possible near their roots with a machete. Diesel fuel will kill a less hardy plant almost immediately. To kill a thistle, a hot day is also required-"to bake them miserable bitches good," as Zane would often say.

On a good day we could hope to significantly slow the advance of a few thousand thistles on an acre or two.