Recently a man and woman came down to the farmhouse to tell my cousin’s wife that a woman was on the farm lane pulling up nettles. They’d seen her up there for the past several days. The tone in their voices was, “Who is this crazy nettle lady?”
That would be, er, me.
I hate nettles. With a passion.
Not only are they a blight upon the landscape, but anyone who has been stung by a nettle will avoid the experience in the future. It is like being stuck by hundreds of hypodermic needles at the same time. Here’s a look at an arm that has been stung:
That arm is mine. Despite wearing rubber gloves halfway up my forearms, I got stung. Nettles are vicious, unless nicely tucked up out of the way where no one will be hurt. Even cattle avoid them.
But the worst part of nettles is that where they grow, nothing else can, because they completely take over with their awful sting-y selves and their miles and miles of roots.
When I was a child, there was hardly a single nettle on the lane and on the farm because my grandfather pulled up every one he saw. Now, without his singlemindedness, nettles have a field day (bad joke).
Here’s a look at some nettles near a stone shed:
And without nettles:
Better, yes?
Last summer, I rid the lane of over 6,500 nettles (and yes, I did count). I found it very relaxing and satisfying. I don’t know of anyone else who shares my obsession passion, though please be in touch if you do!
Here’s one of the piles of nettles I amassed, with a six-year-old next to them to give a sense of scale.
To give nettles their due, they are useful to a number of butterflies and moths, and have medicinal value, and so are fine in moderation. But when they take over, they squeeze out all the wildflowers, and they must be eradicated.
I hope to help the lane return to its former diversity so that it’s not mostly nettles, goose grass (also called sticky weed) and bracken. Where I clear out the nettles, I’ll be scattering seeds for more local wildflowers which will provide an ecosystem for more bees and insects.
I think I’ll be at it for years.
Back in Boston 
…..not sure if you’re aware but rubbing a Dock leaf on a nettle sting works wonders. Dock leaves are always to be found near this nasty little plant…Mother Nature helping us out.
My memories of falling off my bike into a huge patch of nettles as a youngster just make me go ‘ouch!’ every time I see them.
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Alison yes, thanks, I do know the healing qualities of a dock for nettle stings! I think that it would probably take 100 dock leaves for my poor arms. Thanks for writing–other readers can benefit from your suggestion.
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While I maybe don’t hate nettles as you do, I do get frustrated with their quest for world (or at least farm) domination. I have great big patches of them and they spread like wild fire, and as you note here, swallow up everything in their path. I took a machete to one patch (3×5 yards dimension) that used to grow grass for my sheep – it helped but I need to do what you are doing, before I have acres of the stuff. Great job!
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Maureen, thanks for your comment! Yes, nettles will take over the world someday, closely followed by goose grass (otherwise known as sticky grass). Good for you for getting out your machete–you’ll at least slow down them down somewhat. Great to hear from a fellow de-nettler.
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Thanks for the link to the healing powers of nettles. Interesting. I don’t hate them with the passion that you do. In fact, I used to feel slightly nostalgic for them when we lived in America. Sounds odd, but a nettle sting seemed a familiar, mild, outdoor hazard, and I was suddenly presented with a whole raft of others which sounded much scarier (ticks to give you Lyme’s disease, poison ivy which is hard to identify and gives you a rash that looked a lot worse than nettle rash, sumac which was everywhere and poisonous, the brown recluse spider whose bite was toxic and rotted your flesh, and snakes… *shiver*… I’d exchange one snake for acres of nettles, any day). I concluded that the familiarity of risks made them much less scary, so new risks in a new country would always seem worse, even if medically and scientifically proven not to be.
Love the picture of you as a mad nettle-woman.
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I totally know what you mean about nettles versus more scary dangers such as ticks, poison ivy, and sumac. At least nettle stings go away in a day or so. I know someone who had poison ivy so badly that she had to wrap a diaper around it. Makes nettles look tame. But nettles take over so much that nothing else can grow, which is my major objection to them. Thanks for writing! Good to hear from you.
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They hurt so much! Takes a long time for the tingling and stinging to go away.
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You really know when you’ve been stung by a nettle!
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I would be right there with you pulling them up! I’ve pulled more English Ivy and on occasion Kudzu ( which can grow one foot per day!) in my 49 years as a Southerner in the US. Perhaps your farm cousins have access to those really long latex gloves that go to the shoulder?
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Amanda, great suggestion about the gloves! Wow, 1 foot a day for kudzu. That totally dwarfs what’s happening with the nettles. Thanks for writing as a Southerner in the US. –Virginia
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We make them into pesto, it is delicious. But I agree, they are more take-over-ey than I prefer. I used to find their sting so miserable when I was a kid, it would burn for days. Now I have so much exposure on our farm, I find I’m pretty immune/tolerant- I feel the sting for a minute, but then it fades and doesn’t bother me anymore. I try to scrape the stings quickly with my fingernails or some sharp-edged object, and I think that seems to help.
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Hi, Michelle, I haven’t seen many nettles in the US–a few in our garden in eastern Mass, but that’s all. So sorry you have them in the Pacific Northwest! In England we use dock leaves to cool the stings, and of course there’s always nettle tea, but my kids made it once and it was vile. Thanks for writing–I am love reading about your life and farm.
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I find nettle tea is more palatable with lemon and sweetener, and definitely needs to be lightly brewed to avoid being too strong. It is supposed to have amazing tonic properties! But it can be hard to be sympathetic to that when you are fighting it in a field. It is one of the rare things my sheep won’t eat, and they won’t even graze that close to it, so I wonder if it’s sting-ey to them too?
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