Anyone invent an easy, low-tech prune/harvest method for brittlebush flower stalks?

Hello - I live in Arizona and am into "dry" landscaping. One of my favorite native shrubs is "brittlebush" - it's flowers are so beautiful in the spring... but it goes "drought deciduous" in summer, leaving long, brown, "brittle" sticks with brown seed pods all over them.

I want to convince neighbors and friends to let me mattock a few divets/mini swales in their xeriscaped "lawns" and then broadcast native desert seeds there. I have been able to substantially green my yard while turning off all landscape irrigation using this method.

But normies and HOAs complain that the plants look too dead/brown during the summer - what's an easy (and preferably low tech) way to snap off a good portion of the"brittle" seed stalks of this plant, leaving the still-green interior of the bush intact? I'm looking for a low-maintenence procedure of pruning that my neighbors won't balk at. This could be seed collection, or the material could be just left on the ground. I can tell you it's no fun going out with clippers in the summer in AZ to do this one or 2 sticks at a time... and I want to put these bushes everywhere!!

I'm talking about this plant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encelia_farinosa

Thanks for any ideas you guys may have!

Hi Nicole, welcome to permies.
I don't yet have experience with this plant or much anything desert related, but I looked into brittlebush and had a few ideas.
I think it would be an easier sell with your neighbors if there was no extra labor at all, or maybe some labor with potential to be paid for it.
Have you tried burning the stems? Another name I found was incienso, because a resin from the plant is used to make incense. Perhaps the stems can be burnt without alteration. If not, maybe they can be ground up and mixed with powdered charcoal, hydrated and formed as cones and allowed to dry, or some other type of incense.
There are also uses such as glue from the resin, "disposable toothbrushes," selling seeds/cuttings, and some medicinal qualities.
Perhaps one or a combination of these qualities will help entice your neighbors to take the job for themselves, or allow someone to farm that part of their property, with the major benefit of them needing less water for their yard.
This way you may deal with them at different stages, at different times of the year, to spread the tasks out.
I'm not sure of a low tech way to prune the dry stems. I would maybe  carefully stepping sideways on the branches to break them at a nice height if I wasn't trying to harvest them for more than mulch. A cleaner look could probably be accomplished with a hedge trimmer, or maybe a pair of large pruning shears.