By Bruce Karnick Buckthorn species were first brought here from Europe as a popular hedging material. They became a nuisance plant, forming dense thickets in forests, yards, parks, and roadsides. They crowd out native plants and displace the native shrubs and small trees in the mid-layer of the forest where many species of bird’s nest. Buckthorn is the current problem at Oakwood cemetery.

Oakwood is an abandoned cemetery which means there is no money for maintenance. There are a group of volunteers that do what they can to take care of the cemetery grounds and bring awareness to the first cemetery of Hastings. “We’re able to do mowing and we’re adding some landscaping plants from our own gardens, but we have a problem, a big problem, with buckthorn in the cemetery,” Pioneer Room Curator Cindy Thury Smith said.

The entire group of volunteers, plus members of the Hastings Environmental Protec- tors, worked most of an entire day last fall trying to clear part of the cemetery.

“We worked like dogs and hardly made a dent,” Thury Smith added. What the heck is a Go(at) Fund Me? Easy! The Volunteers are utilizing the crowd funding site ‘Go Fund Me’ to raise funds for cemetery clean-up utilizing GOATS! Goats are an environmentally friendly way to remove invasive plants, they are entertaining and effective. The cost of bringing in the goats is not cheap. The cemetery is divided into four sections. Clearing each section will cost $750, for a one-year total of $3,000. A follow-up cleaning is recommended, bringing the total cost of the multi-visit treatment to $5,000. The hope is to bring in goats to munch on the buckthorn and get it to a level where they can then do manual removal.

The volunteers are asking for your help. You can learn more about the plan by visiting the Go(at)FundMe page here. https://www.gofundme.com/f/goat-fund-me-for-oakwoodcemetery