Tools: I assisted in boat-building when I was a lad. Once I was a teenager I could use every tool in the yard bar one - the "each" = adze. Too damned dangerous even for a sensible boy.
I still see old boys doing this sort of work on hedges in Sussex - but only at the Weald and Downland Museum! They still wear old tweeds and caps and leather jerkins, too, even though they are probably geography teachers and retired accountants enjoying their countryside hobbies.
Everywhere else, hedges are augmented with wire fencing. And watching one farmer with a tractor and an attachment whizzing along the hedge in the early spring (the same attachment seems to do the verges and the tops of the hedges) makes you realise how labour-intensive the whole process would have been if done by hand.
Are you in drystone wall country AKH, or does that start further north?
dearieme - I'd never use an adze, not even with armoured wellies on.
Sam - we often see tractors with hedging attachments, usually producing a hacked finish but quick. Drystone wall country starts a few miles to the north of where we are, where limestone country begins. We saw a chap repairing a stretch last year. He explained that he first had to knock down the old wall in such a way that he could reuse the stones.
Farmers slashing hedges in spring avoid the later trouble of birds pinching seed to feed the nestlings. Also doing that reduces the hedge to a series of isolated sorry looking bushes, which need strong additional fences to maintain security. With any luck it also distributes thorn bush fragment to puncture tyres of pesky cyclists.
A.K. H. That sound a bit like a line from Rabbie Burns' Merry Muses. Or a Rambling Sid Rumpo ditty. You have to be of a certain vintage. Ditty. I wrote "ditty" proactive tacks! Ooh, err, missus?
Doohamer - that's why we don't cut our hedge until the nestlings have all departed, at least as far as we can tell.
The "Let me hae a whample at him wi' mine eatche — that's a'." is a Sir Walter Scott quote which just popped up when I was looking up the dialect word "eetch".
"Farmers slashing hedges in spring avoid the later trouble of birds pinching seed to feed the nestlings."
No farmer will be cutting hedges with a tractor mounted flail in spring, as the closed period for using them starts on 1st of March. Hand laying and coppicing is allowed up to the end of April though (I think). The only exception to the 1st March rule is roadside hedges which may be flailed back for road safety purposes at any time of year.
Sobers - ah - roadside hedges are what I've seen being flailed after 1st March. Probably all I ever notice because we drive past lots of roadside hedges.
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Tools: I assisted in boat-building when I was a lad. Once I was a teenager I could use every tool in the yard bar one - the "each" = adze. Too damned dangerous even for a sensible boy.
I still see old boys doing this sort of work on hedges in Sussex - but only at the Weald and Downland Museum! They still wear old tweeds and caps and leather jerkins, too, even though they are probably geography teachers and retired accountants enjoying their countryside hobbies.
Everywhere else, hedges are augmented with wire fencing. And watching one farmer with a tractor and an attachment whizzing along the hedge in the early spring (the same attachment seems to do the verges and the tops of the hedges) makes you realise how labour-intensive the whole process would have been if done by hand.
Are you in drystone wall country AKH, or does that start further north?
dearieme - I'd never use an adze, not even with armoured wellies on.
Sam - we often see tractors with hedging attachments, usually producing a hacked finish but quick. Drystone wall country starts a few miles to the north of where we are, where limestone country begins. We saw a chap repairing a stretch last year. He explained that he first had to knock down the old wall in such a way that he could reuse the stones.
Last night I took it into my head to see how many other spellings of "each" ( = adze) there are.
(Mind you, we said it; we didn't write it.)
Eech, eetch, eitch, eatch, eitch, eatche, etch, eche. (From Dictionars o the Scots Leid.)
dearieme - I looked that up and found -
"Let me hae a whample at him wi' mine eatche — that's a'."
Which sounds pretty ferocious.
Farmers slashing hedges in spring avoid the later trouble of birds pinching seed to feed the nestlings.
Also doing that reduces the hedge to a series of isolated sorry looking bushes, which need strong additional fences to maintain security. With any luck it also distributes thorn bush fragment to puncture tyres of pesky cyclists.
A.K. H. That sound a bit like a line from Rabbie Burns' Merry Muses.
Or a Rambling Sid Rumpo ditty. You have to be of a certain vintage.
Ditty. I wrote "ditty" proactive tacks!
Ooh, err, missus?
Doohamer - that's why we don't cut our hedge until the nestlings have all departed, at least as far as we can tell.
The "Let me hae a whample at him wi' mine eatche — that's a'." is a Sir Walter Scott quote which just popped up when I was looking up the dialect word "eetch".
https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/eetch
"Farmers slashing hedges in spring avoid the later trouble of birds pinching seed to feed the nestlings."
No farmer will be cutting hedges with a tractor mounted flail in spring, as the closed period for using them starts on 1st of March. Hand laying and coppicing is allowed up to the end of April though (I think). The only exception to the 1st March rule is roadside hedges which may be flailed back for road safety purposes at any time of year.
Sobers - ah - roadside hedges are what I've seen being flailed after 1st March. Probably all I ever notice because we drive past lots of roadside hedges.
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