Hedges Hedges HEDGES! Sorry if I sound overexcited, it’s because I am. We have had 900m of new hedges planted on the farm this month! If you are walking from Foxton to Fowlmere, hopefully you will see it along two sides of a field. Hedges provide valuable habitat on the farm for birds, pollinators, insects and mammals and also provide lots of berries for food. They help sequester lots of carbon, as well as act as wildlife corridors or highways through the farmed landscape, allowing wildlife to move about.
Our new hedge doesn’t quite do this yet……they’re a bit spindly and small so far….but the future is bright, the future is hedge. To protect them from being eaten by the deer, they begin their life in a plastic tube. To stop them being overrun by weeds, they have also been planted through a hessian-type mat which stops the weeds coming through to begin with and then should biodegrade as they get going.
Once hedges have been planted and grown, they require management. This can be through cutting hedges in the winter months, but also through techniques like hedge laying or coppicing. We have also had a hedge laid in the last month, which you may also see if you are walking from Foxton to Fowlmere. The idea of this technique is to give your hedge “more bottom”. Historically, this would have been done to prevent animals from escaping through hedges, but in addition, animals like to nest in the bottom of hedges, and this helps give them more cover. The top bits are cut away, and the main trunks of the plants are cut through nearly all the way (but not quite) and then bent over and woven together. It is a highly skilled craft, and we are grateful to George, who has done a top job. Different areas of the country lay hedges in different ways depending on the reasoning, tools and skills available historically.
Depending on management, farmland can provide a vast range of habitats for wildlife and has shaped the species we see around us today. At Allerton, we are big fans of managing habitat with great attention to detail so it can deliver as much as possible for biodiversity. Another slightly different approach is “rewilding”, and I was lucky enough to visit two rewilding sites this month. The Knepp estate in Sussex has been allowing part of its estate to rewild for a number of years, and it was really interesting to see the development of scrubland and associated species. Wild Ken Hill is slightly earlier in the process, but equally has had some interesting findings. They have also released herbivores into the areas to start to recreate some of the actions of herbivores in the wild. If you are interested, I would recommend the book Wilding, which is written by one of the creators of Knepp, to find out more.
Not much farm news, stuff is hopefully growing rather than drowning….!
To repeat last month, “Normal” winter weather would be great. Please stop raining.