Grasping the nettle

Broccoli is horrible. It smells, when being cooked, like cat pee.

- Michele Hewitson

First, harvest your bastards. Carefully. If you can find chainmail gloves, grab those. We have an abundance of bastards, also known as stinging nettles, in our sheep paddocks. When I was a novice country woman, I had no idea what they were until I attempted to pull up, bare-handed, a clump of what I thought were just weedy things. They are weedy things. But they are also nasty, stingy things. They have fine barbs which go for you and sting like fire. They are worse than triffids. As soon as I touched that first bastard I realised their evil. I did somehow know that in the event of an attack one should find a dock leaf and apply it. An old wives' tale? Intensive research, in other words the internet, is divided on this matter. What really works is to stay away from the bastards.