Eastern Team
Practicing the ancient art of hedge laying
January 2011 by Nic Fish
With the winter break over it was time to get back to work for the Central and Eastern footpath team. Our first task was to look at a job completed last year (Garbon track feb-may 2010), with heavy rain forecast for early in January, it is was an ideal time to make sure the completed work was working successfully. The aim of the project was to reinstate the track that had been washed out by the floods of Nov 2009. The floods caused huge damage to the track, as well as sending the floodwater straight into the farmyard.
The pictures below show the project from day one, last November up to the most recent picture from early January this year.
The last picture clearly shows how well the drain is working, in taking the water of the track, and away from the farm.
The rest of January has been spent hedge laying and fencing along a footpath in Troutbeck. Hedge laying is and ancient skill that is still alive today. Early forms of hedge laying was to lay dead or felled trees in straight lines, stacked tightly and high enough for them to be stock prove. As skills and knowledge progressed a way of keeping the hedge a live was mastered. Flexible tress where used, so that they could be bent and manipulated into shape. The trees are cut three quarters of the way through the trunk, low to the ground and then bent into the angle they need to be.
The picture above shows a completed hedge, the loose branches are intertwined to form a tight nit hedge. Helping to make it stock prove. Hedges are laid a number of times before they can gain enough height to become fully stock prove. The laying takes place in the winter months when the trees have lost their leaves, when spring arrives and they again become full of life the hedge will start to grow upwards towards the sky, this helps to give the height to the hedge for the next time it is laid.
Before and after shots of a laid hedge.
