daieno bikaApr 5, 2025

Yesterday was a good day for cutting willow stakes and stabbing them back into the ground. So I spent four and a half hours doing so, and accomplished this!

It’s maybe 20 feet of #fedge that will eventually become an actual hedge to fence in the horses.

For now it needs protection in the form of an electric fence to keep them from chewing off all the growing parts before it gets established. It will take me multiple seasons to extend it all the way to where I need it to go.

Why do this instead of building more board fencing, you ask? (No one asked. I’m going to tell you anyway.) Well, the land our rural co-op exists on is very hilly, which means some parts are high and dry - great for putting posts in the ground and having them last for decades - and some parts are low and soggy - terrible for putting fence posts in because they will rot. Also, board fencing can be pricey, even if we’re doing all the work to install it ourselves.

But we still need fencing in those areas to keep the ponies contained. I don’t like using electric fencing for perimeter fencing. I want a real physical barrier that won’t suddenly stop working when it’s icy, snowy, the charger isn’t working, etc etc. I also don’t super like having the horses get shocked. Which does happen to poor Henry sometimes, because he can’t see very well and doesn’t always register that the fence is there before he walks into it, and then he gets a nasty surprise. There are things I can do to mitigate each of these problems, but… long term, I want to reduce the use of the zappy fence as much as possible.

Luckily, willow will grow into a nice coppiced thicket with a bit of encouragement, and we have lots of it growing here! I can cut whips from right nearby and use them to build living fencing that will benefit more creatures of our landscape than just the horses, and it doesn’t even damage the areas I harvest from because they’ll sprout right back up with even more stems. I think this is so cool. I can hardly wait to see it sprouting once the weather warms up a bit more!

I’m also looking forward to getting my hands on Paul Lamb’s new book, Of Thorn & Briar, about the craft of hedge laying in the UK. This willow weaving thing I’m doing isn’t quite that, but it’s not entirely dissimilar, either.

#hedge #OfThornAndBriar #HedgeLaying #LivingFence #willow #coppice #homesteading #sustainability #PastureManagement #LivingWithTheLand #FenceWeaving #grow

PollinatorsDec 8, 2024
@Broadfork The hedge laying parts were at hand to get several sections done. Well done. You may have avoided a hedge laying lifting injury. The pleaching is risky for amateurs. #hedgelaying.
DanJul 2, 2023
@kristiedegaris we need more of this!
#DryStoneWall
#Hedgelaying
Traditional #Coppice
And so on!
KrisMay 2, 2023
My brain is mush - attempting to fill in #RLE1 for #RuralPaymentsScheme because I want to try and get a #grant for #hedgelaying
9 open gov.uk tabs, 3 maps & 4 how-to’s and slowly dawning misery that even a masters degree in English cannot help me parse the chaos that is #Defra and the #RuralPaymentsAgency 😭
KrisApr 24, 2023
Bore da folks. Today I am inspecting #hedges that we will be laying next year, measuring a few trees, including an old #oak, marking out veggie beds and sprinkling #wildflower seeds with gay abandon.
#gardening #smallholding #hedgelaying
Jonathan WrightApr 14, 2023

Hedge laying adds enrichment for Sidmouth's Donkey Sanctuary

https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/hedge-laying-adds-enrichment-sidmouths-8350457

#Hedgelaying #DonkeySanctuary #Sidmouth #EastDevon #Devon #Wildlife #Ecology #Birds #Insects #Lichen #Mosses

Hedge laying adds enrichment for Sidmouth Donkey Sanctuary

Hedge laying is a skill that has been practised for centuries

DevonLive
Nathan NelsonMar 2, 2023
More on a brilliant few days training last week on stone-faced earth bank repair and Devon hedgelaying https://nathannelson.co.uk/devon-stone-faced-earth-banks-and-hedges/ #devon #hedgelaying
Devon stone-faced earth banks and hedges

Last week, I had a really satisfying few days of work on two courses delivered by the Dartmoor Hill Farm Project through the Our Upland Commons Project. I started with an introduction to stone-face…

Nathan Nelson
Habitat Aid Ltd.Feb 28, 2023
Time for a hot bath. https://www.habitataid.co.uk/blogs/blog/a-little-hedgelaying #hedge #hedgelaying
A Little Hedgelaying

Regular readers wlll know how keen I am on hedgelaying. It's one of those bits of rural management much misunderstood by some, particularly nowadays. Like cutting a meadow there are those who think it's just destructive, whereas in fact it's completely the opposite. Hedges - like meadows - need well-informed management. Without it two of our richest habitats will disappear. With it, on the other hand, they will flourish for many hundreds of years. It's no wonder that PTES (the People's Trust For Endangered Species) are running a campaign for better hedgerow management.  The state of the hedges around here - such that are left - is pretty typical of what I see around the country. Some are allowed to grow out into lines of trees or even deliberately destroyed, but more generally they're degraded and even destroyed by poor cutting. It's not just that poor management destroys all the fruit, berries, nuts and blossom from a hedge; it has a detrimental long term impact too.  My social media feeds are regularly filled with examples of hedges which have been really massacred. Locally though the problem is less obvious. For starters, the hedges here are flailed every year - not in the three year rotation Natural England recommends. Why not? No-one can explain it to me. If they were cut annually but incrementally that would be a modest improvement - i.e. to allow a little of the previous  season's growth to remain. The idea is to take a very aggressive cut every few years - again in sections - and start the process off again. But they're not cut like this. The contractors cut them to the same height, sometimes only just over 1m, year after year. This causes plants to terminate in tortured fists. After a while regrowth stops. Plants just give up. Sometimes you end up with a row of what looks like toothbrushes or, if the hedge is wider, over time it will lose its density and base. Any new growth is going to be on the outside edges of the hedge, which then grows out in a loose leggy way before it meets the flail.  The hedge hollows out; it becomes useless, both in its original function and as a resource for wildlife. Ultimately the hedge plants disappear and non-structural and short lived species like snowberry and bramble are all that's left - sometimes not even that, as this photo shows.  This is the inside of the hedge along our lane - I use the word

Habitat Aid Ltd
JamesFeb 25, 2023
Found this today #hedgelaying
Nathan NelsonFeb 23, 2023
Loving being a student this week. Yesterday learning stone-faced earth bank repair and today learning #Devon #hedgelaying with the #Dartmoor Hill Farm Project, plus seeing new bits of Dartmoor.