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This weekend we burnt. Throughout the winter months Robert lays hedges. This is done in rotation over the farm and is a bit like the Forth bridge – you never ever get to the end.
The final hedge to be laid this winter is between Dillings and Rushy Field. Our third time of laying since we’ve been here. Stupid. In retrospect we should have trimmed it more often to encourage the hedge to stay thick, bushy and do what it’s meant to do; be a strong effective stock barrier as well as providing a bountiful larder, the ultimate des. res. and the definitive transport system for multitudinous types of wildlife. This doesn’t mean hedges should be trimmed every year – but once every three to four and at a slightly greater height each time. By doing this you can increase the hedge’s useful life as a bushy barrier and it should only need laying, say, every twenty years, even forty years, instead of every eight. Of course there’s the other side to the coin – if you don’t trim but lay, the hedge will produce copious quantities of firewood and won’t require hours of fuel-guzzling tractor work. Something which with our changing climate and countryside we should to take into consideration?
It’s hard gruelling work, laying hedges. Especially on our land as the trammelled clay becomes a gloopy, welly-hungry, energy-depleting morass. Over the years Robert has honed his skill and expertise resulting in hedges that are aesthetic living sculptures, works of art. My role, on the other hand, continues much as it always has. I’m the skivvy, the pack donkey, the serf that trudges up and down the hedge line bowed under huge bundles of branches and brash for the final burn and tidy. But in some perverse way it’s satisfying, hard, hot work. And a change from the intensity of the lambing and calving sheds.
okay - role-reversal. Robert wanted me to take some action shots of him for the Hedgerow Biodiversity Action Plan Group
We were like a cartoon characters – exploding out of the duvet, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide open and hair seemingly standing on end. The colossal crack-bang-clap of thunder shocked us awake, the simultaneous lightning flash floodlit the bedroom in a bluish light, the heavens opened and hail hammered down, pounding at the windows and ricocheting off the corrugated roofs of the barns. Wow! Robert leaped from the bed and ran round the house franticly turning off all sensitive probably-blasted-to-the-heavens-by-now stuff, bounded back into bed, snuggled down and pulled the duvet over our heads as we waited for the next explosion, and waited and…waited. That was it, just the one mega blast.
“I think we should wean the calves today” I mumbled from under the duvet
“What?”
“The calves…wean them…today”
“Yes, I heard, but why, what?”
“Well it came to me. Suddenly. Just like that. In a flash of lightning!” I giggled.
So we did.
He decided to lure me away. Promises of a romantic night in an ancient manor house. Being wined and dined. Lazy morning (no animal checking) and colossal breakfast.
What girl could resist?
Then came the rub: ‘Well actually, I really do have to be at the national hedgelaying championships’
‘What – all day?’
‘Yess…ish. But then we’ll go home!.’ Grrr…eat. Read the rest of this entry »
This week is Devon Hedge week.
We haven’t celebrated the beauty and diversity of our hedges this year by opening the farm or holding a hedge event because last year when we did the heavens opened with a vengeance and all our hard work was rewarded with but a handful of brave souls. To cap it all, the seasonally decorated barn full of delectable autumn goodies was flooded, the sheep went walkabout, cattle bawled hideously and hid under the trees and stress levels reached new dizzying heights - making it a thoroughly miserable affair!
A different story this October. The sun is shining; the stock content; and we walk around our hedges and admire their glory in solitary splendour. Read the rest of this entry »
Every year I sell some of my cows and heifers. Generally it’s a handful of my yearling heifers and a few cows from the main herd.
Heather’s a young down calving heifer who’s up for sale. She’s due to calve in the next few weeks with her second calf. Yesterday when I checked the cows she looked very imminent. Her vulva was engorged and she was holding her tail high, her bones were soft and her udder was beginning to fill. I decided to bring her back up to the farm to keep an eye on her. Read the rest of this entry »
