I’ve spent a couple of days helping lay a hedge on a neighbour’s farm over the last fortnight which has been good if extremely cold. It’s an excellent example of the benefits of the environmental grant schemes that have been and are still available to farmers. This hedge was planted along with a couple of small […]
I got into the swing of hazel over Christmas and have cut a bit now. I like to cut a little, process it, then cut more; that way, by alternating activity, I avoid spending too much time doing either (and the associated muscle pain), but more important it avoids creating a cat’s-cradle of fallen stems that’s a pain to unravel.I’ve […]
Despite some pretty nasty weather, Gravenhurst’s P3 group turned out (with a couple of special guests) last weekend, to attack a fourth section of one of our old thorn, boundary hedges. It’s a pretty spiteful hedge – some old, gnarly stems of hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna and belicose blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, fighting with a storm of spikes […]
Creating a woodland is a slow old business. Since we planted Bottoms’ Corner, our small hazel wood, we’ve been watching every small development with a fair degree of excitement that we tend to keep to ourselves – we’ve found that most normal people don’t particularly see the joy in growing sticks. The first cut of […]
Last February saw our third not quite annual hedge laying weekend attended by a group of mostly local people, some already well practised in the craft; others eager to learn. It was a grim weekend of irregular snow flurries and bitter north-easterly wind but despite such unpleasantness, a dozen or so people turned out […]