Learning Hedge Laying

 Last week I had a couple of perfect winter days. 

I do some work for a friend on a casual basis as he has a number of properties and they all need things doing to them on occasion (sash cords, floors, kitchens, etc), and he has a man who does much of the outside maintenance work on the estate. 

His name is Steve and he works on lots of farms and small holdings locally, he does some great work and one that always stands out is his hedge laying. I always chat to him if we're working on the estate at the same time, he's a smallholder as well so we share similar interests. 

I enquired last year about getting him to lay the hedge I planted about 9 years ago, but he's all booked up. Instead he suggested I spend a few days with him to learn the basics and then have a go myself. 

So last week I spent two days with him on his smallholding (in the same village as ours) in the glorious winter sunshine. 

He knew I could use a chainsaw and had done coppicing work before, so I could make the cuts needed and understood trees. 

We set straight to work. It was a very difficult hedge to lay, too old and over stood really, but doing this gives it some structure while the seedlings he'll plant to gap fill will establish. 

It reminded me very much of working with my brother when he had some coppicing contracts on riversides. I dragged out the brash as needed and tried to keep it clear. Steve got me straight on the cuts on the hedge though, and because there was two of us we could lay over bigger bits of the hedge than if it was one man working. 

It produced an incredible amount of wood, as well as the fact we could pull out the posts and binders we needed to form the structure of the hedge. 

I feel like in two days I learnt so much. Steve was great company and we had a good laugh together, working at a good rate to get the job done. 

Since being home I've started on some of my own hedges straight away (more of that in another blog post/video) to gap fill and try to get enough posts to start laying the nine year old hedge. 

Feels like a countryside skill I was lacking, especially as my grandfather was a champion hedge layer and later a national judge for it. 

Who else can lay hedges? 

What countryside skill would you like to learn?