Blackmore Vale, Somerset: By tradition hedge layers were entitled to what they could get from the hedge – kindling and firewood, nuts and berries, rabbits and other creatures for meat
One test of the density of a good hedge, I was told at the Blackmore Vale annual hedge-laying competition, is that a butterfly should be able to fly into it but not straight through it. To achieve the right base for sufficiently dense, healthy growth, a hedge needs renewal every seven years or so. The traditional skill of hedge laying involves the accurate cutting of the thicker branches to lay them flat as "pleachers" to provide a firm, stock-proof screen at the base, and makes for good, new growth in spring.
The good hedge shelters animals against rough weather, provides safe habitat for small creatures, and makes a wildlife corridor. There was hazel in among the hawthorn and blackthorn in the hedges we were looking at. Dormice love hazelnuts and hate travelling over open country.
Hardy's "Vale of the Little Dairies" (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) is characterised by its irregular patchwork of small fields divided by the lines of ancient hedgerows. Anxiety about the loss of such hedgerows, which elsewhere have been rooted out to allow for large-scale prairie farming, emphasises the precious nature of this particular landscape and of the skills of men and women like those I watched bent over their billhooks on the edge of a soggy pasture.
In the past hedge laying was done by farm labourers who were not specialists such as shepherds or cowmen, and so had little work or pay in winter. By tradition they were entitled to what they could get from the hedge – kindling and firewood, nuts and berries, rabbits and other creatures for meat. Years ago I met a hedge layer who showed me a battered billhook used by his father and grandfather and maybe his great-grandfather before him.
Skilled hedge laying today is costly; we pass many miles of sparse, gappy hedges with barbed wire across the base.
0 comments:
Post a Comment