The Story
One Sunday in June, 1988, I was working with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's Habitat Restoration Team (HRT) in the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco. Although there was a large amount of the alien invasive shrub, French broom, in the ravine where we were working, it wasn't the plant we were targeting, partly because we had no practical way of removing it in our tool inventory. When two volunteers tried to pull one up anyway, they strained mightily together and then fell on their butts when the shrub finally broke loose. Watching this gave me the classic "there has to be a better way" response and I went home to my shop wondering what I could weld together that would give HRT the tool we needed to tackle this problem. The Weed Wrench was born.
Unaware that nearly every part of the country has its own invasive woody plant problem, I thought I would make a few tools for the local area and that would be that...
All these years and thousands of tools later, the enthusiastic and grateful acceptance of Weed Wrench nationwide continues to grow. I am pleased to keep making this tool for all the land stewards, public and private, who are working to restore habitat, reduce fire hazards, stop invasive woody plant infestations, maintain trails, or just keep a pretty wildflower meadow open. You have a been a wonderful group of people to work for.
Tom Ness, Weed Wrench Designer & Manufacturer
