Speaker 1: So I am not the Richard Niggas, as it says
Speaker 1: on the board over there. I'm just his friends that
Speaker 1: came along to interview him. This is my good friend,
Speaker 1: conservationist writer hedge Layer wants cavalryman Richard Nigus and proud
Speaker 1: resident of Suffolk, possibly the finest county in England, or
Speaker 1: so he says.
Speaker 2: So wheah, good afternoon, everybody, Thank you very much for coming.
Speaker 2: We thought there'd actually be two people and we would
Speaker 2: be fighting against Morris dancers and the jingling of bells,
Speaker 2: which was reassuring to hear.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The reason why I asked my pal Richard Prudo to
Speaker 2: come all the way from North Wales, a five and
Speaker 2: a half hour journey to get here, is because we
Speaker 2: do with another pal of mine who's actually for message.
Speaker 2: We don't hold that against him. We do a podcast
Speaker 2: together called country Slide, a Smear of Country Love, and
Speaker 2: the purpose for us starting that podcast was that we
Speaker 2: felt that there is a.
Speaker 3: Lot of.
Speaker 2: Mistruths, misunderstandings, just playing old squid, as we say in Suffolk,
Speaker 2: spoken and written about the work in Countryside and I,
Speaker 2: as Richard tells you, I'm a professional hedgeler. He is
Speaker 2: a professional outdoor guide forager. So actually, if you go
Speaker 2: and get one of them chaps who says you can
Speaker 2: eat that mushroom, he actually knows the ones you can
Speaker 2: eat and the ones that send you to Mars. So
Speaker 2: that's quite a handy old thing. And so we thought
Speaker 2: one of the big things that's possibly lacking in the
Speaker 2: countryside is a misunderstanding of how it works now and
Speaker 2: how we manage it, how farming links up with nature conservation,
Speaker 2: how our food gets onto our tables, and how that
Speaker 2: can be done sustainably. And also some of the actions
Speaker 2: that both he and I taken here as a coppicer
Speaker 2: and me as a hedge layer, that some of the
Speaker 2: things that we do, which are seen by some people
Speaker 2: to be almost destructive, we wanted to highlight that actually
Speaker 2: these are constructive, they're regenerative.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book.
Speaker 1: But I thought rather than me just coming on here
Speaker 1: and whiffling the way to you about Bill Hooks, I
Speaker 1: thought it was better to get Richard to come along
Speaker 1: and ask questions.
Speaker 3: Because every single week we talk at.
Speaker 2: One another via the power of the Internet. I don't
Speaker 2: think that'll ever catch on the Internet, but he's he's
Speaker 2: sure he will ah, And we talk to one another
Speaker 2: and people seem to like it. We are Britain's most
Speaker 2: popular rural podcast, unbelieve ah. And so we thought, well,
Speaker 2: the turbus have come along. And yes, of course it's
Speaker 2: a lot of it's about my book words on the Head.
Speaker 2: But also we thought that between the turb us will
Speaker 2: carry on our mantra of what we do on Country
Speaker 2: Slide is that we try to talk about, We try
Speaker 2: to explain and.
Speaker 1: We don't preach to anybody. We just tell you about
Speaker 1: our lived experiences. Say yeah, because if you go online
Speaker 1: you can see that there's lots basically there's nothing but conflict.
Speaker 1: And in terms of if you look at any conversation
Speaker 1: about the countryside, it's no, you must do this, no
Speaker 1: you must do that. No those people are bad, No,
Speaker 1: those people are bad. But when you actually come and
Speaker 1: speak to people in real life at events like this
Speaker 1: or just literally out in the field br Uhs, those
Speaker 1: extremes of conversation never really come about. Actually, real interaction
Speaker 1: is a lot more amicable and lot more collaborative. So
Speaker 1: we try and continue those conversations that we both have
Speaker 1: out with people on the ground in whatever work we
Speaker 1: do and try and bring it out in our contents,
Speaker 1: but we do. So I think we should start that
Speaker 1: off by talking about that their book. So can you
Speaker 1: hold it up for the audience to see. So what's
Speaker 1: It's called Words from.
Speaker 2: A hedge by Richard Nigus, and it's a hedge layer's
Speaker 2: view of the countryside. I'm not saying, like so many
Speaker 2: books written about nature and the countryside, that you've all
Speaker 2: been doing it wrong. This is my mantra of how
Speaker 2: it will get it right. That would be arrogant. And
Speaker 2: the opening chapter in him is saying that anyone who
Speaker 2: says they're an expert on hedgerows is a filthy lot.
Speaker 3: And that's my g jau cub.
Speaker 2: But no, there is a very important thing because I
Speaker 2: am a proud Suffolk born and bred man, and I
Speaker 2: think I know quite a lot about the hedgerows of
Speaker 2: Suffolk because I've work and a.
Speaker 1: Lot of them.
Speaker 2: I know quite a bit about hedgerows and Norfolk because
Speaker 2: I have to go north of the Waveny to go
Speaker 2: and try and sort of, you know, get them back
Speaker 2: into line. And I occasionally will go over into Cambridgeshire
Speaker 2: as well, just because we can show them what having
Speaker 2: five fingers this long but high six you have to
Speaker 2: get out of this tent to live Richard, so they
Speaker 2: can't run that fast on account of their gills.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the the.
Speaker 2: Thing that we wanted to achieve with writing this book
Speaker 2: was to talk about that teu are a French word
Speaker 2: which sadly we don't have a word for in English,
Speaker 2: but the taint of the place that you understand it
Speaker 2: that the soil, the climate, the way the wind blows,
Speaker 2: and what that soil might do and what makes that
Speaker 2: grow the wildlife species that are are present. And I
Speaker 2: wanted to explain about what tewar is and what that
Speaker 2: means to me as a hedge layer.
Speaker 1: Is the fact that.
Speaker 2: I intimately know Suffolk hedges. But I'm going off to
Speaker 2: Ireland in two weeks to go and headline something called
Speaker 2: Hedgefest in Ireland.
Speaker 3: I know that's quite cool.
Speaker 2: Problem means I'm gonna have to go over there and
Speaker 2: speak to a load of Irish hedge layers and tell
Speaker 2: them what to do. One I'm English, so that's not
Speaker 2: necessarily going to solve a problem with Oliver Cromwell. But secondly,
Speaker 2: I have no idea how a hedgerow grows in county
Speaker 2: offerly where I'm off to, because even in Suffolk. One
Speaker 2: of the things that I highlight in here is that
Speaker 2: Suffolk's a big old county, but a hedgerow and new
Speaker 2: Market on the chalk is a country mile away from
Speaker 2: the Sandlings, just a few miles from here. But here
Speaker 2: you are on the edge of the Suffolk. Boards and
Speaker 2: hedges grow different here. I'm from mid Suffolk, and in
Speaker 2: our high Suffolk clay you only got to sort of
Speaker 2: show a maple to the soil and it's it's six
Speaker 2: foot before you know it, because it's such strong soil.
Speaker 2: But then if you go down to South Suffolk, they
Speaker 2: grow differently again. So that whole idea that you are
Speaker 2: an expert hedgelager is a nonsense.
Speaker 3: You aren't you.
Speaker 2: If you're any good, you know quite a lot about
Speaker 2: your own little local tawa. I am therefore unashamedly parochial,
Speaker 2: and that if you like. No one in all the
Speaker 2: reviews that I've had of it have ever said he's
Speaker 2: a right parochial bugger this by, But if they did,
Speaker 2: I'd say thank you, because that's actually.
Speaker 3: A good thing.
Speaker 1: There aren't many venues where you have to speak up
Speaker 1: over the sound of the morristances are they? So let's
Speaker 1: roll this back a bits. Why why hedges and why
Speaker 1: are hedges importance? Why our hedges important enough for you
Speaker 1: to have had a career working with them.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. So the hedge listening? What is
Speaker 2: a hedge? A hedge is a man made construct. Some
Speaker 2: people say that they're the last remnants of the old.
Speaker 3: Woods, the old old woods.
Speaker 2: I would wager that that is largely incorrect. We know
Speaker 2: that the oldest hedgerow in Europe is English.
Speaker 3: We know that it was in.
Speaker 2: Existence two thousand and five hundred BC near Peterborough. And
Speaker 2: we know that because the wonderful archaeologist Francis Pryor.
Speaker 3: If you used to watch Time.
Speaker 2: Team, he was the sensible one with the beard, who
Speaker 2: understood the archaeology of their land. But he was a
Speaker 2: finlander himself, and he dug around, and unlike so many
Speaker 2: other archaeologists, he hasn't got old rock formations to give him,
Speaker 2: and old footings from buildings and to show he's got pete.
Speaker 2: But what he was able to find was in a
Speaker 2: ditch just outside Peterborough, he saw a slight difference in
Speaker 2: color when someone had cut a new ditch bisecting him.
Speaker 2: He saw some darkened line there, and he dug down
Speaker 2: into it and he found in there a small piece
Speaker 2: of black and blackthorn brash. Now Francis Pryor is also
Speaker 2: an amateur sheep producer, so he realized that that piece
Speaker 2: of blackthorn brash had a little right angled hook on
Speaker 2: the top, and that's how blackthorn grows when you've given
Speaker 2: it a trim. And so he dug down more, thinking, gosh,
Speaker 2: this is quite amazing. Stuff is Obviously he was a
Speaker 2: hedge here, and it was obviously getting cut, and I
Speaker 2: think it's quite old. And then he found more lines
Speaker 2: of obviously it was hedgebrash. And then he found a
Speaker 2: pleacher that had obviously had been cut and then desiccated
Speaker 2: and died away.
Speaker 1: But he also found on one side.
Speaker 2: Of this ditch where there'd been a hedge planted alongside
Speaker 2: a handcuffed ditch.
Speaker 3: Well, that's new.
Speaker 2: You know, someone's actually dug a ditch here. And over
Speaker 2: here he found very high nutrient levels. And those high
Speaker 2: nutrient levels can only mean one thing that there was
Speaker 2: a density of livestock here he got that little old
Speaker 2: piece of brash radiocarbon data two five hundred BC. It's
Speaker 2: at a point when it was thought that we weren't
Speaker 2: even farming. Actually we've got a laid hedge, we got
Speaker 2: a handcuffed ditch, and we've got enough sheep on there.
Speaker 2: So that is proper intensive farming. So when we look
Speaker 2: at the hedge, and you ask me why it's important,
Speaker 2: because the hedgerow is as old as we humans farming
Speaker 2: in this country, and the hedge only stays as a
Speaker 2: hedge with human intervention. You cannot rewild a hedge, Believe
Speaker 2: you me, you cannot do it because it was planted
Speaker 2: by human hand. And if it's going to not turn
Speaker 2: into either a linear wood or a block of scrub,
Speaker 2: it then has to be managed. And that management traditionally
Speaker 2: was hedge laying or coppasing. We're into coppersing that I'm
Speaker 2: trying to tell. But that intervention is another thing that
Speaker 2: I think is also the most fascinating thing. Why being
Speaker 2: a hedge layer is important to me because I know
Speaker 2: the two five hundred years ago, if there was a hedge,
Speaker 2: there must have.
Speaker 3: Been a hedge layer.
Speaker 2: So I would argue that my craft has got hugely
Speaker 2: ancient connotations to it, but I'm not doing it for
Speaker 2: the craft I don't care about. Craft does not pay
Speaker 2: my mortgage. Graft pays my mortgage. So what I had
Speaker 2: to do was prove to the farmers in this neck
Speaker 2: of the woods that my management technique of hedgerows as
Speaker 2: beneficient to their farming. So I love the idea. It's
Speaker 2: got all that history and heritage like we see around
Speaker 2: us today we're at a folk festival. There is ancient
Speaker 2: history and heritage. But then old boys out there who
Speaker 2: are dancing at the moment, they're all wearing frocks and
Speaker 2: painted their faces blue and stuff like that. They have modernized,
Speaker 2: you know, ancient country dances, and it's a bit like
Speaker 2: my pedglay. Really, it's got an ancient connotation, but it's
Speaker 2: down got a very modern relevance.
Speaker 1: So you've got a mixture of history in there. You've
Speaker 1: got historical land use, you've got a bit of archaeology.
Speaker 1: I know that possibly the biggest part of all of
Speaker 1: this for you is conservationally, So expanding my earlier question
Speaker 1: out a bit, what is the what is the difference
Speaker 1: between a row of trees? But something call a hedge
Speaker 1: even though it's not managed anymore. And while the hedges
Speaker 1: you were laying last season, what what is a conservation
Speaker 1: benefit of you cutting and bending all of those trees
Speaker 1: rather than just leaving them alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I suppose you might think, okay, So here
Speaker 2: we are an arable country. Yeah, we have a bit
Speaker 2: of beef on the down by the river, but and
Speaker 2: there's not whoge amount of livestocket, so we think, okay,
Speaker 2: So what relevance as a hedge layer got in today's farm.
Speaker 2: One of the large parts of my job is as
Speaker 2: a conservationist, is improving biodiversity of a hedgerow. Now you
Speaker 2: can have a big, tall, straggly line of trees, a
Speaker 2: belt basically one that's grown out, and a turtle dove
Speaker 2: will say that's a good hedge. I like that because
Speaker 2: they like nesting up at the top there. But for
Speaker 2: the vast majority of farmland species birds ones that are
Speaker 2: sadly or too often under threat because of the various
Speaker 2: agricultural practices that we had and sometimes still have, most
Speaker 2: of the stuff of life starts at the base. So
Speaker 2: therefore a hedge which is thick from bottom to top
Speaker 2: is an ideal hedge and then incrementally cut and allowed to.
Speaker 3: Get slightly bigger and slide. It's all and slowly bigger
Speaker 3: and taller and wider.
Speaker 2: Is a great one, but it's no good unless you
Speaker 2: have actually managed to thicken up the base. And he's
Speaker 2: thicking up the base of the hedge by either laying
Speaker 2: it or coppassing it.
Speaker 3: Compassing being the traditional method of managing hedgerows in.
Speaker 2: Suffolk, but we use laying because it's basically like coppasing
Speaker 2: on acid.
Speaker 3: Basically you get more benefit and.
Speaker 1: You have less time in which the hedge has got
Speaker 1: to go back.
Speaker 2: And I would also argue that a laid pleacher one
Speaker 2: of the stems when it comes down, there's a picture
Speaker 2: that you've got lateral growth going all the way along it.
Speaker 2: If I cut it off just at the base, it'll
Speaker 2: grow back, but you're only getting growth going out that way.
Speaker 2: With a laid pleacher, you've got growth going that way,
Speaker 2: and you've also got all the way along the lateral growth.
Speaker 3: When the little buds come up. Now I know, because
Speaker 3: what we.
Speaker 2: Do is when we look back at those laid pleachers
Speaker 2: that in the bowl right down at the cup base,
Speaker 2: that's where the yellowhammer physically wants to nest in that
Speaker 2: little cup bowl. But I also know that the linnets
Speaker 2: love it nesting along a laid pleacher, where then you're
Speaker 2: starting to get upright shoots coming off that laid pleacher.
Speaker 2: So we know that those two species, one red listed,
Speaker 2: one amber listed, would rather nest in a laid hedge
Speaker 2: than not. And we know that because we've got naturalists
Speaker 2: to come and help us on the farm cluster that
Speaker 2: are in this particular study that we did, and they
Speaker 2: told us that there were more yellow hammer and linet
Speaker 2: nests in hedges that were laid the ones which we'd
Speaker 2: either coppist or left alone. So what's special about a
Speaker 2: hedge over a line of trees or a hedge that's
Speaker 2: just left to go to rack and ruin. We okay,
Speaker 2: one there's left to go to rack and ruin that
Speaker 2: eventually becomes desiccated and hollow in the bottom. So all
Speaker 2: that is is a predator tunnel. So every single stoke, weasel,
Speaker 2: fox and rat badger says, fantastic, this is a great place.
Speaker 2: I can go and run along the middle here, and
Speaker 2: I can go out and I can go and predate
Speaker 2: on that great partridge nest. In other how superb is that?
Speaker 2: And if it is just a tall old line of trees, well,
Speaker 2: like I say, superb for a turtle.
Speaker 1: Dove, possibly all right if you're a bullfin.
Speaker 2: But if you're one of the smaller the dunnocks, the
Speaker 2: limits the yellow hammers, then it's not so good for
Speaker 2: them because they haven't got that low basal density growsing.
Speaker 2: So therefore that management of the hedge enables us to
Speaker 2: go and have a wider biodiversity benefit. It also enables us,
Speaker 2: if you like to go and offer more protection, because
Speaker 2: if you're only that big, having a bare old hedge
Speaker 2: to run around in the bottom of, you've got a
Speaker 2: lot less chance to survival. And when you're that tiny,
Speaker 2: life is pretty damn dangerous. So the more top cover
Speaker 2: that you have, well, the better you are. So laid hedges,
Speaker 2: say wildlife, that's.
Speaker 1: Another sort of simultaneously a habitat and a place to live,
Speaker 1: and they're a corridor that things can move along. So
Speaker 1: does that give wildlife a space at the edge of
Speaker 1: all these big arrable fields as well to move around
Speaker 1: and get between those The woodland habitats will get to
Speaker 1: the water and get to the other things that they need, because.
Speaker 3: They don't just just need a hedge, do they. No, No, no,
Speaker 3: absolutely that.
Speaker 1: And one of the other things that we do in
Speaker 1: our business is that we coppice woods.
Speaker 3: Richard's a copper too over.
Speaker 2: In Wales, but my business partner he's got a coppering
Speaker 2: business too, and so when we're improving small woodlands and
Speaker 2: making them better, it works on the same principle is
Speaker 2: that you rotationally coppice hazel, you get thicker basal density
Speaker 2: of the wood and then you're going to have more
Speaker 2: likely you're going to get woodlark, nightingale, cuckoo nesting in there.
Speaker 2: They want that dense space in there. But if we
Speaker 2: make a fantastic wood, or we renovate an old pond,
Speaker 2: or we go and dig a.
Speaker 1: New one, that's we know. Obviously woods are great for nature.
Speaker 2: Pond's central water is the stuff of life, but it
Speaker 2: just becomes an oasis, an island. So the hedge has
Speaker 2: this ability to be what I call the artery and
Speaker 2: a landscape. It's a motorway along which wildlife can move
Speaker 2: from one having a drink of water to that habitat
Speaker 2: that they want living in a woodland setting, which is,
Speaker 2: which is essential. But the other thing we've forgot, the
Speaker 2: most important part of this. I say, in words from
Speaker 2: the hedge available of the work ah, that a hedge
Speaker 2: is only any good if it's good for a farmer.
Speaker 2: Because a farmer, you know, he doesn't set out in
Speaker 2: the morning and think, huh, what can I kill today?
Speaker 2: It doesn't think that he doesn't go, I tell you what,
Speaker 2: I really fancy burning some diesel. So I'm just going
Speaker 2: to go and hitch my flyer up to a tractor
Speaker 2: and I'm going to go and smash that up. They
Speaker 2: don't think that, you know, to ignore what you might
Speaker 2: read in certain newspapers or books and stuff about how
Speaker 2: terrible farmers are. It doesn't make any cost effective sense.
Speaker 2: But I'm also trying to make the hedge not just
Speaker 2: work for a wild I've it's got to work for
Speaker 2: the farm. And if you actually look at the other
Speaker 2: benefit of when we go and have these linear ribbons
Speaker 2: running across a field.
Speaker 1: When they grubbed all the hedges out, or.
Speaker 2: So many hedges out in nineteen forty six up to
Speaker 2: a sort of nineteen eighty odd, they thought, well, were
Speaker 2: maximizing yield area. But they the reason they stopped grubbing
Speaker 2: hedges out because they realized there was huge soil erosion problems,
Speaker 2: that the soil was getting desiccated because the retention and
Speaker 2: the capillary action that a hedgerows roots has. Now we
Speaker 2: also know when you're thinking so importantly about the water
Speaker 2: quality and farmers are getting punished if they are polluting rivers. Well,
Speaker 2: those roots network that the hedge has and they put
Speaker 2: on more route if you lay or coppice them, because
Speaker 2: that's the reaction that they have.
Speaker 3: They're not just putting more growth on on top of the.
Speaker 2: Below, it's filtering out the night trates that we are
Speaker 2: putting on the soil so that the water systems are uncleaner.
Speaker 2: And then Anglian water they go and pay the farmer
Speaker 2: money because the night trate level has dropped in the water,
Speaker 2: which means, of course we've all got cheaper water bills. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: thats you now, Well that hasn't happened here either, But
Speaker 2: the principles are the same. But the farmer is getting
Speaker 2: paid a small premium for having cleaner water, and that's
Speaker 2: because it's got a grass margin and it's got an
Speaker 2: improved hedgerow. So yeah, how wonderful is this thing the hedge?
Speaker 1: So in the book you we sort of break it
Speaker 1: down chapter by chapter with conversations you seem to, particularly
Speaker 1: the early chapters, you focus on one person or one
Speaker 1: client or one farm that does stop in a particular way.
Speaker 1: So those farmers that are paying you to manage their
Speaker 1: hedges and write the management plan and lay the hedges,
Speaker 1: are they paying for.
Speaker 3: It out of their their pockets? How is this being
Speaker 3: paid for? How? All right? How was this being paid for?
Speaker 2: Well, up until July the fourth last year, it was
Speaker 2: being quite healthily paid for by all of you, sup
Speaker 2: in this room, the tax payer via government grant. Because
Speaker 2: when you're well, when the not all, I'll be honest,
Speaker 2: there's huge amounts of the work that I do. Farmers
Speaker 2: they will add whistles and bells to it from their
Speaker 2: own pocket. If they've had a good year, they'll go,
Speaker 2: we might as well do that. But if you can't
Speaker 2: get me grund, let's go and do that. It makes
Speaker 2: sense to go and add that to it. We'll put
Speaker 2: that little tweak in here, Yes, we'll put that extra
Speaker 2: a little lightne a cover crop in there next to
Speaker 2: that gass margin, something like that.
Speaker 3: They'll quite happily do.
Speaker 2: But most of it was funded either under country sized
Speaker 2: stewardship or this new all fan fancy or singing all
Speaker 2: dancing thing called ELMS, the Environmental Land Management Scheme, and
Speaker 2: the idea of ELMS was public money for public good.
Speaker 2: And that public good part of it was the fact
Speaker 2: of all that the factors that we just talked about
Speaker 2: why hedgerows are important through to you know, us planting
Speaker 2: new woods, huge suedes.
Speaker 1: Of environmental good was done. Now.
Speaker 2: One of the other reasons why we do our podcast,
Speaker 2: and one of the reasons why I wrote this book
Speaker 2: is that this is largely an overwhelmingly positive book. I
Speaker 2: will tell you the bad, but I'd also say when
Speaker 2: we do this, when we add this bus, this bus,
Speaker 2: this plus this, we get nature recovery in these areas.
Speaker 2: And that's why I focused on these individuals, because they're
Speaker 2: did individual farmers or just individuals.
Speaker 1: I've got a chapter on now about Silent.
Speaker 2: Jim, who's a deer stalker, because actually controlling deer is
Speaker 2: usually important if you want to have increased biodiversity.
Speaker 3: But that's by the way, the.
Speaker 2: That those individuals they reflect that it is quite possible
Speaker 2: to make significant positive changes. So your tax dollar was
Speaker 2: actually being incredibly well spent. But one of the things
Speaker 2: that we have found we have a very positive podcast,
Speaker 2: we've got a very positive book. There are a number
Speaker 2: of wildlife organizations who find it easier to paint the
Speaker 2: bad and forget to tell you the good. And that's
Speaker 2: an understandable business regime because if you tell everything, say, oh,
Speaker 2: the curlew's dead, there's no curls. They're all dead. But
Speaker 2: they could do we could get some back if you
Speaker 2: gave us some money. You'll go, oh, parl curlews, I'm
Speaker 2: going to go and donate you some cash. If I
Speaker 2: went and told you that the largest single population of
Speaker 2: curlew nesting in the southern England is in the Avon
Speaker 2: Valley farm cluster or run by the Game Wildlife Conservation Trust,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you how they've managed to go
Speaker 2: from twenty five breeding pairs now to one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2: And they have done that through habitat improvement. They've done
Speaker 2: that with some clever draining and some clever rewetting, and
Speaker 2: they've done that through really heavy targeted predator control on
Speaker 2: fox's carrying crows magpiles right if I said all those things,
Speaker 2: and so we can get to that point. So things
Speaker 2: are going well, we.
Speaker 3: Don't need my money then, do you.
Speaker 2: So therefore you can understand as to why the doom
Speaker 2: and gloom story that you so often hear about the
Speaker 2: countryside nature's declined. Oh yes, that X number of species
Speaker 2: of all dead. Right, we haven't got enough hedges. We
Speaker 2: haven't got enough hedges, and we need we need to
Speaker 2: pal to another forty seven thousand miles more hedges.
Speaker 3: Otherwise everything is going to be dead.
Speaker 2: That's not true. It's buncom it's utter nonsense. Look after
Speaker 2: what we have now and manage it well, and then
Speaker 2: you can achieve nature recovery. I'm not saying everything's all
Speaker 2: rosy in the garden, but what this book is supposed
Speaker 2: to tell you is about positive stories. And the positive
Speaker 2: stories are about the individuals who I work.
Speaker 3: For one thing, it would.
Speaker 2: Be very easy if you just read this book in isolation,
Speaker 2: you think what every farmer's what is sant?
Speaker 1: Every gamekeeper is a lovely chap?
Speaker 3: What course, that's not true.
Speaker 2: I am actually honest enough in there to say, well, also,
Speaker 2: the wats all of the downsides and how we've ended
Speaker 2: up here. But I'm fed up to the back teeth
Speaker 2: with the narrative that every farmer's a git, that every
Speaker 2: gamekeeper is a murderer, and anyone who starts a chainsaw
Speaker 2: is somehow akin to pole pot. So I'm trying to
Speaker 2: redet to address that balance. And so some of the
Speaker 2: funding to help get this book done was from the
Speaker 2: Suffolk Agricultural Association and the Felix Stornley Cobbold Trust to
Speaker 2: farming charities. And this book is probably in the hands
Speaker 2: of more farmers than anybody else because what they saw
Speaker 2: it as was a template for well, look your mate
Speaker 2: down the road did it, so you can too. And
Speaker 2: so a lot of these characters are not only great
Speaker 2: examples of farming conservationists, there are actually great examples that
Speaker 2: other farmers.
Speaker 1: Go.
Speaker 2: Oh, ed Nesling is a top lad, he's no muggy,
Speaker 2: knows how to farm. So therefore, if he's managed to
Speaker 2: go and focus his attention on returning the gray partridge
Speaker 2: to Winston and Debenham and around there, perhaps I could
Speaker 2: do that next door to them.
Speaker 1: So it's supposed to be a positive news story. So
Speaker 1: it seems like hedge laying has become a new beekeeping.
Speaker 3: It's sort of.
Speaker 1: The the activity that you get into because it's a
Speaker 1: conservation related activity.
Speaker 3: But if you have a back garden you can do
Speaker 3: it there as well.
Speaker 1: And it does seem like your book has come along
Speaker 1: just exactly the right year for that. Do you do
Speaker 1: you get requests.
Speaker 3: To do people's gardens?
Speaker 1: Do you get requests to do do Missus Miggins's bottom
Speaker 1: of the edge patch?
Speaker 3: That kind of thing, Yeah, was called Miggans. I apologize.
Speaker 2: They're what we call sibby jobs, you know, because in
Speaker 2: other words, we're sort of as a disuppose of reference
Speaker 2: back to my army background where.
Speaker 3: I started live.
Speaker 2: And yes, we do do some, and to be perfectly honest,
Speaker 2: I rather prefer working on far because you can work
Speaker 2: then at scale landscape scale.
Speaker 3: You can go and we do a hedgero management plan
Speaker 3: for a.
Speaker 2: Farm or a cluster of farms, and we can link
Speaker 2: all those farms together so they become one land mass.
Speaker 2: They're a very handy way at the end of the
Speaker 2: season of laying a hedge in someone's garden. You do
Speaker 2: twenty meters or something like that, and you lay it
Speaker 2: and you stake it perfectly, and you bind the top
Speaker 2: with three beautiful binders and it looks just like the
Speaker 2: ones on Clarkson's farm, which is always whenever I say
Speaker 2: I on a hedge layer.
Speaker 1: They go well, like on Clarkson's farm, and you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: Well, most of reality isn't like on clients as farm
Speaker 2: because you don't need to have this beautiful craft. What
Speaker 2: you need to do is lay the hedge accurately, crook
Speaker 2: it in place, and that will do well.
Speaker 3: Because you haven't got time.
Speaker 1: We're on a clock.
Speaker 2: We get paid by the meter, so therefore we need
Speaker 2: to run, get over the top of it, do it
Speaker 2: properly and then get home again.
Speaker 3: So yes, we do do si.
Speaker 1: But one of my other things I'm extremely keen on
Speaker 1: I know that you're doing.
Speaker 2: This now in Wales, is that it is an activity
Speaker 2: that people can do and we have too few hedge layers.
Speaker 2: I said earlier that the government of the previous government
Speaker 2: told us that we had to have planned forty seven
Speaker 2: thousand miles of new hedging. To give you an idea,
Speaker 2: one that's seventy two thousand kilometers one k one meter
Speaker 2: of hedge you put six plants in under a definite grant.
Speaker 2: Now my mats wasn't that hot when I was at school,
Speaker 2: which is why I'm a hedge.
Speaker 3: Lab But while you're in the army exactly.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't a household cavalry there, boy saying, at
Speaker 1: least I had my look smart while I was thick.
Speaker 1: So that's the main thing. Porfies our four legs. That's
Speaker 1: all you need to know.
Speaker 3: But that's very true. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the most important thing is that how are you
Speaker 2: going to go and grow all these aren't you? We
Speaker 2: aren't growing en off hedge whips in this country. To
Speaker 2: facilitate that.
Speaker 3: We are then going to have to go and wrap
Speaker 3: them all in plastic.
Speaker 2: Because we've got far too many deer and in this
Speaker 2: neck of the woods, the predominant species that are really
Speaker 2: causing mayhem fallow and muntjack. Neither a witch are a
Speaker 2: native species.
Speaker 1: We are non native species eating out the underneath the hedges,
Speaker 1: so we have to guard them, but that is single
Speaker 1: use plastic on the whole.
Speaker 3: We do have bi degradable.
Speaker 2: Guards, but I've not really found any that are cost effective.
Speaker 1: Work with you.
Speaker 2: No, Now, the cays, the canes, they're interesting, so we
Speaker 2: don't hardly have a coppice industry here anymore.
Speaker 3: So how are you going to keep this.
Speaker 2: Little old hedgewit up in its single use plastic guard?
Speaker 2: Or we could use hazel if we had a rotational
Speaker 2: coppice business industry in this country the world, but we don't,
Speaker 2: so we import all that bamboo from China. Now why
Speaker 2: are we planting forty seventh miles a new hedge? So
Speaker 2: the government, oh, it's going to be great for the environment. Yes,
Speaker 2: forty seven thousand miles a single use plastic and chain
Speaker 2: and canes imported from China and the plants imported from
Speaker 2: Holland because we don't grow enough here. So you see
Speaker 2: where I'm slightly coming from here is that you'll see
Speaker 2: in four years time there'll be a manifesto and doubtless
Speaker 2: there will be lots of stuff about how we're.
Speaker 3: Going to improve the environment.
Speaker 2: The election before last it was the tree plant In
Speaker 2: election the Conservatives said we're gainst planned one billion trees.
Speaker 2: Labour went shit. They put one billion dowg one point
Speaker 2: four billion under Jeremy Corbyn. The Liberal Democrats went stuff
Speaker 2: that three billion trees. We're going in three billion trees
Speaker 2: and enough hedges that we could go to the moon
Speaker 2: and back with them.
Speaker 3: Well we don't grow enough.
Speaker 1: But more to the.
Speaker 2: Point, there ain't many people like him and me, which
Speaker 2: you probably think you thank God for that, but actually
Speaker 2: doing the practical hard graft, actually doing the hard yards
Speaker 2: of planting those hedges or planting those trees. And as
Speaker 2: we've already said, you can't just leave a hedge to
Speaker 2: be a hedge of planted that bye, You've got to
Speaker 2: go and manage the damn thing all it stops being
Speaker 2: a hedge.
Speaker 1: And a wood is only your decent wood if it's managed.
Speaker 1: So we need more people.
Speaker 2: And that's another reason why I wrote Words from a
Speaker 2: Hedge Available and back and we do Coach Slide podcast
Speaker 2: is because we try and encourage other people to go
Speaker 2: and do idiots like us and go and work with
Speaker 2: our hands out in the hedges in the woods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the it's not it's all tree planting, but
Speaker 1: there's this halfter care aspect as well that I mean,
Speaker 1: we're in probably the driest year for the last fifty
Speaker 1: years now, I reckon about the ind of September, that's
Speaker 1: how it will have turned out. Certainly where we are
Speaker 1: in Wales, we've got cracks in the fields that you
Speaker 1: could lose a bird down where there's I don't think
Speaker 1: i've seen green grass in the backfield for since May.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty bad. Trees we planted last winter are
Speaker 1: not going to survive because they're just they're in shallow roos.
Speaker 1: They're only about that far down. You go down with
Speaker 1: a spade, you need it opened, put the tree whip
Speaker 1: in and then close it up again. If that top
Speaker 1: eighteen inches is dry, it's got no chance. It hasn't
Speaker 1: got a chance to the roots to get down. When
Speaker 1: I drove over here, went on the A fourteen and
Speaker 1: is it near Cambridge? I go to that bit where
Speaker 1: it looks like someone is farming tree guards but no
Speaker 1: tree those trees.
Speaker 3: So what's the score with that? Oh, that's a duel
Speaker 3: in Eastangliar's crime them.
Speaker 2: So there was a lot of the work that we're
Speaker 2: getting told to do now is mitigation.
Speaker 3: So they build.
Speaker 2: We've got a new build housing thing and a next
Speaker 2: door but one village to us, which, without any hint
Speaker 2: of remorse or realizing just how repellent this is, there
Speaker 2: is a building project called red Wings. Well, yes, red
Speaker 2: Wings used to be out in that field it's now
Speaker 2: bloody identicate houses. There are four bedrooms executive homes because
Speaker 2: we need some more four bedroom executive homes because we
Speaker 2: haven't got enough of them.
Speaker 1: These places always named there for what, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like wings curlews or partridge meadow, all these places. But
Speaker 2: the daft thing is is that we'll then have this
Speaker 2: thing called bio diversity net game, or as we call it,
Speaker 2: kicking the can down the road. So if you lose
Speaker 2: a piece of habitat that's been there for I don't
Speaker 2: know how many centuries. And they managed to get some
Speaker 2: planning permission on him. One of the interesting things is
Speaker 2: that farmers again getting real bad red or they grubbed
Speaker 2: all the hedges out where yes they used to because
Speaker 2: the government told them to.
Speaker 3: They didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Remember, they're then to start.
Speaker 2: A tractorp and dynamite trees because I'll be a fun laugh.
Speaker 3: You know how much money am I going to make
Speaker 3: out a dynamiting a tree? Nothing?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'll do it anyway, It's not what they do.
Speaker 3: They're farmers of business people. You don't do stuff for
Speaker 3: no reason. Anyway.
Speaker 1: They can't grub hedges out on farms.
Speaker 3: You have to go.
Speaker 1: Through quite a hefty round.
Speaker 2: Of applications to explain as the white is essential to
Speaker 2: your agricultural business, as to I remove a hedge. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're building new houses in the meadows or the
Speaker 2: larks or wherever red listed species they're destroying this time,
Speaker 2: if you're a builder, you don't have to because you
Speaker 2: have oh it's called.
Speaker 1: Bar diversity net gain.
Speaker 2: So yes, that hedge might have been there for one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years, but they're going to pay us
Speaker 2: to go and plant a brand new hedge any old
Speaker 2: place really earlier.
Speaker 3: Just matched that up, that'll be right.
Speaker 1: But but rather than losing three hundred and.
Speaker 2: Fifty meters of old hedge, will give you ten percent more.
Speaker 2: So therefore you've got three hundred and eighty odd meters
Speaker 2: of new hedge.
Speaker 1: But once it's planted, the building company is not responsible
Speaker 1: for its care.
Speaker 2: It can just stay there in those guards whither and
Speaker 2: die and no one goes back and says or all
Speaker 2: what's happening. And that's what happened along the A four
Speaker 2: t Now, to be fair, the previous government did go oders.
Speaker 2: It's very embarrassed because there were a lot of dead trees.
Speaker 2: Because remarkably the environmental company who got the contract to
Speaker 2: plant those didn't know that if you just planted a
Speaker 2: tree whip into crap top soil that came down from there,
Speaker 2: and you just sort of covered it with a little
Speaker 2: bit old shingly grass and then you put these trees
Speaker 2: on this bank, so therefore it's desiccated into subsoil.
Speaker 3: All the dreamed bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah that they all died, you know, who would have
Speaker 2: thunk it, But but.
Speaker 1: It was that for the year first year. I think
Speaker 1: that's really great.
Speaker 2: They've mitigated against all this habitat loss by planting these
Speaker 2: trees along there. And like you say, now, what they've
Speaker 2: done is plant is a lovely array of single use plastic.
Speaker 2: So I'm afraid one of the things that where we
Speaker 2: struggle is that most of the time we are working
Speaker 2: with a job where we're looking I do hetero management plans, right,
Speaker 2: and they work on a ten year side. I really
Speaker 2: should do them in twenty year cycles, because I'm looking
Speaker 2: if I lay aheadge in year one out on need
Speaker 2: probably laying again in year twenty one right by working
Speaker 2: ten year cycles on the whole, just for management's sake. Now,
Speaker 2: the problem is in that twenty year cycle. That is
Speaker 2: five different governments, five different manifestos, five different empty promises
Speaker 2: made by however, many parties, and nature conservation and farming
Speaker 2: does not work in these tiny, little five year segments
Speaker 2: of policy. We work at best on ten years most
Speaker 2: of the time. If it's trees or hell, how many
Speaker 2: years century century?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, depends what you're growing. But yeah, there's not
Speaker 1: It's like any experiment in forestry. If you want to
Speaker 1: find out, all, let's see what grows well on that
Speaker 1: bank over there, have to plant them, manage them, and
Speaker 1: maybe your children will find out whether the experiment works.
Speaker 1: It sits outside of the human cycle. Just there's a
Speaker 1: point I'm going to come on to in the moment,
Speaker 1: which is about the book. But are there any consultant
Speaker 1: tocologists in the room.
Speaker 3: Good right now? About something mean? But I work with them.
Speaker 1: I work with them a lot, and I've got a
Speaker 1: couple of very good friends that are consultant to cologists.
Speaker 1: There is this whole parallel industry related to habitats and
Speaker 1: habitat loss of bi diversity, net gain and projects like that.
Speaker 1: That is, you get these mitigation projects, but you also
Speaker 1: get these prebuilding things where that make the construction projects
Speaker 1: very expensive, so you've probably heard about the bats and
Speaker 1: the newts for HS two and things like that.
Speaker 3: That's often a.
Speaker 1: Smoke screen because those things are expensive to do and
Speaker 1: it's over a large, very diverse landscape. But you might
Speaker 1: have seen this thing where people net hedges. Put a
Speaker 1: net over a hedge because in five years time you
Speaker 1: might want to do houses there, but it's cheaper to
Speaker 1: net the hedge in winter, so birds card nest in
Speaker 1: there and remove that as a nesting habitat until you're
Speaker 1: ready to build a house there. We've ended up with
Speaker 1: for big construction projects. It's weird parallel conservation labeled economy
Speaker 1: that doesn't actually help wildlife. What it does is helps
Speaker 1: house builders helped companies stay within the law, which isn't
Speaker 1: a bad thing on its own, it's just it's not
Speaker 1: the same as conservation. So you see this when those
Speaker 1: same ecologists, who are very trained and very dedicated people
Speaker 1: go out to do surveys on land to assess it,
Speaker 1: to say is this a good habitat? Is this a
Speaker 1: habitat that is doing well for this particular species. The
Speaker 1: problem is that they're doing that under construction site rules,
Speaker 1: which means they have to wear all all the BPE,
Speaker 1: all the things that work on a construction site, even
Speaker 1: though the thing that is going to be constructed there
Speaker 1: doesn't exist yet. So my friend once had to do
Speaker 1: water bowl surveys next to a riverbank for a cable
Speaker 1: route that was coming across. But because of his next
Speaker 1: to water, she had to wear a dry suit and
Speaker 1: flotation stuff. Fair enough, but because he was going to
Speaker 1: be an electrical site one day, the risk assessment said
Speaker 1: she had to wear flash gear. So fireproof clothing on
Speaker 1: top of the drysuit.
Speaker 4: Can I just say something on the netting of patures, Yes,
Speaker 4: so in me which is well, so this is edgeles.
Speaker 3: For the new man.
Speaker 4: There's probably about one hundred meters legs. The pedge has
Speaker 4: recently just become strict down to the ground.
Speaker 1: I was done last winter, and I'm.
Speaker 4: Sure it's because because of BNNG and being able to
Speaker 4: reduce the quality of habitat. When success it is there
Speaker 4: was no longer any hedge. Oh, it'll make a DMG
Speaker 4: a lot easier. Have removed a lot of the ecological
Speaker 4: impediments found intivation.
Speaker 3: It's easy to gain if you're starts in Fronzerra.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's that is one of the
Speaker 1: that's a very interesting observation. I don't heard that is
Speaker 1: that one of them.
Speaker 2: I write a lot about the good guys in here,
Speaker 2: and they almost are the losers in a lot of
Speaker 2: environmental policy, because they have got a lot of grape utches,
Speaker 2: lots of linuts, there's a lot of yellow hammers, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of red pole, There's all these various species.
Speaker 2: Although actually, yeah, we've got less in that wind. They
Speaker 2: we got them, yeah, yeah, combuntings, of course we want them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they were down in that field there. When actually the
Speaker 2: farmers who have perhaps farmed right up to the hedge
Speaker 2: bottom and have not been so environmenting sound when it
Speaker 2: then comes to say, well, let's get what improved and
Speaker 2: can you make If you start from zero, it's pretty
Speaker 2: damn easy to get to a bit better if you're
Speaker 2: actually already at twenty five. It's much harder for those
Speaker 2: people to get up to fifty, whereas to get from
Speaker 2: zero to twenty five is a lot simpler. And like
Speaker 2: you say, is that sometimes there are some people and
Speaker 2: this is why some of the relationships that I see
Speaker 2: with some of the construction companies is that they're putting
Speaker 2: habitat in Why are you putting that there that will
Speaker 2: make any ecological or conservation sense in any shape or form. Well,
Speaker 2: it's because you're actually just making a pig's ear look
Speaker 2: slightly more like perse And that's really why. And unfortunately
Speaker 2: these heroes and the heroes many of them are in here,
Speaker 2: are actually they've done it happen with their conscience. They
Speaker 2: know that they're actually going to be at the losing it.
Speaker 1: And so this was reviewed in the Times literally.
Speaker 2: Supplement very favorably, I might add, which was a bit
Speaker 2: of a shock to me. I didn't know I was
Speaker 2: in the Times literally someone because I'll be honest, I'm
Speaker 2: a hedge layer. I happen to write is a side.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that she said she's an
Speaker 2: unashamed pelemicist. So I've already told you I'm unashamedly parochio,
Speaker 2: but also I'm unashamedly a telemicist. Not completely. I don't
Speaker 2: sit or it's either my way of the highway, but
Speaker 2: I think there are some pretty clear and obvious black
Speaker 2: and hite issues, and I'm afraid that I don't think
Speaker 2: any yellowhammer. I have large yellowhammer tattoo on my arm
Speaker 2: because I like yellow hammers, yellowhammers and gray partries in
Speaker 2: my thing when I do book number two or get
Speaker 2: a gray partridge on mack side. I am of the
Speaker 2: firm belief that no yellowhammer, if asked the question, would
Speaker 2: ever say, do you know what we need? More politicians?
Speaker 2: I do know if asked they would say, I quite
Speaker 2: like a couple more fellows who do that nice thing
Speaker 2: with the hedges where I like to lay. And I
Speaker 2: think that is where we are missing with nature recovery,
Speaker 2: is that we are doing form filling exercises. We're asking
Speaker 2: ecologist to go and work for the poachers, not the gamekeepers.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a great worry. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you a funny old thing. I was out at Buxhel.
Speaker 2: I was coppersing some steaks and binders in there, and
Speaker 2: I write about it here. And there they were doing
Speaker 2: an ecological survey for nesting habitat for this great big
Speaker 2: pipeline that they're bringing water from Lincolnshire down through Norfolk
Speaker 2: and Suffolk and down to sort of South Suffolk. It's
Speaker 2: a great big pipeline and they're doing the nesting habitat
Speaker 2: survey and Goldie is my business partner, the ian I
Speaker 2: this is a triple S I would So we were
Speaker 2: allowed to take our trucks in there because we're the
Speaker 2: dama the rides. And we had to sit there and
Speaker 2: we waited and we waited, and we waited because we
Speaker 2: thought we'd better have a cup of tea. And we
Speaker 2: were waiting for the chapoo owns that would come down
Speaker 2: and say which coop we could work with. And there's
Speaker 2: no phone works there anyway, We're waiting on our thing,
Speaker 2: and we say, what the buddy hell's that? And there
Speaker 2: are these two visions in Orange walking towards us, and
Speaker 2: they had great big builders hats on.
Speaker 5: Triple Excel orange sort of day glow, high vis vest
Speaker 5: boots were still toe caps on Triple Xcel over trauses
Speaker 5: in Orange.
Speaker 2: One of them had a laptop and the other one
Speaker 2: had a pair of binoculars.
Speaker 1: But you always can smell I can spot us.
Speaker 2: Sued because look at someone they carry their binoculars, somebody
Speaker 2: who actually knows what they're looking at.
Speaker 1: They sit there, this one there.
Speaker 2: By the time, by the time many things flown off,
Speaker 2: they've got hold on that's gone. Anyway, So these two
Speaker 2: people were trembling along and Goldie's got is he has
Speaker 2: Labradors because he's silly.
Speaker 1: I have Cocker Spaniels, far better dogs.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Goldie's old labs out there and lovely old
Speaker 2: dog called Oz. And you know he's one of them dogs.
Speaker 2: If you ever had a break in, right, he wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Just good, Hello, my name is Oz. If you'd like
Speaker 2: to know where he keeps his keys, they're just under here,
Speaker 2: he would.
Speaker 1: He's anyway, these old things have come towards it and
Speaker 1: oswa pladdy hell And I went home and Goldie just
Speaker 1: went Mark's like his dog because he's a pro past
Speaker 1: turn chat anyway. I mean he said, what you're doing?
Speaker 1: And I'm sure every single ecologist always has this question,
Speaker 1: asked him. And now we're doing bird nesting habitat survey. Okay,
Speaker 1: have you seen much?
Speaker 2: And the and the girl started to saying, oh yes,
Speaker 2: and the no, terrible, terrible. Now this is one of
Speaker 2: the dual woodlands in Suffolk, these woods, and we thought, okay,
Speaker 2: why what's the matter and he said, well, he said,
Speaker 2: poor habitat.
Speaker 1: Isn't it's a trifle aside? Would that's been managed in
Speaker 1: the same way since it was probably first planted back
Speaker 1: in about fifteen hundred and something. We know that's when
Speaker 1: this was first set up as it would. But more
Speaker 1: to the point, as he was talking, woodcock jugged over
Speaker 1: the rye right and out there on out of the stubbles,
Speaker 1: just like the overwinter stubbles outside Cake Cake there's a
Speaker 1: covey of gray partridges. And he said, well, haven't you
Speaker 1: said nah, it's not good habitat at all. And so
Speaker 1: I got to think him, whereas they flopped off with
Speaker 1: their massive boots and silly hats and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: would it not be better though? If their reports said no,
Speaker 1: it's terrible. Because if you go and report it that
Speaker 1: it's bad, you report that there is no nature, you report.
Speaker 2: That everything's dead. It's not just we're talking about at
Speaker 2: the start. That is a good way of raising money
Speaker 2: for some charities. But it's a lot simpler thing for
Speaker 2: government to go and say, well, yes, I've obviously putting.
Speaker 1: This water pipe through here, We're going to put these
Speaker 1: pylons the whole way through Suffolk and destroy all that
Speaker 1: farmland and habitat.
Speaker 2: Yes, we can put those turbines up there. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: this would be superb because we're not killing anything because
Speaker 2: everything's dead. And those people work for Angler Water. They
Speaker 2: were contractors, subcontractors of subcontractors. But that is the problem
Speaker 2: that we're facing. So when I'm laying my hedges, and
Speaker 2: the reason why I put this was a hedge layer's
Speaker 2: view of the countryside, I reckon I can lay on
Speaker 2: average if we're staking a binding a hedge, we do
Speaker 2: about forty two three meters a day if we're conservation
Speaker 2: laying it, So therefore we're laying almost like a Devon
Speaker 2: style a bit lower. Crooking it in place, we could
Speaker 2: do up to about eighty but I reckon we work
Speaker 2: probably do about seven eight meters and then stop for
Speaker 2: a cup of tea out the flask. So it gives
Speaker 2: the opportunity to lean and sit and watch, and I'd
Speaker 2: probably do more leaning and sitting and watching. The most
Speaker 2: people in the countryside, and most of the stuff with
Speaker 2: my view of it is the fact that the farmers
Speaker 2: ain't the enemies. The builders are just doing what they're told,
Speaker 2: The ecologists are just doing what they're told.
Speaker 1: But there's a bunch of people who are sat in
Speaker 1: Westminster who are quite happy to use our wildlife, our wildlife,
Speaker 1: our natural our green and pleasant land.
Speaker 2: The reason why all these guys are out there dancing,
Speaker 2: why there's a history of folk music, all our heritage
Speaker 2: and history based in the land, in the tewa of
Speaker 2: our land. They are more than happy to use all
Speaker 2: that as collateral for going and ticking a few boxes.
Speaker 1: And my view of the countryside is that we needed
Speaker 1: to start having politicians who have a semblance of understanding
Speaker 1: of what idiots like him and me, who work with
Speaker 1: our hands.
Speaker 2: For living in woods and in hedgerows what it actually means.
Speaker 2: Come and join us for a bit and might learn
Speaker 2: a lot more because even.
Speaker 1: As a as a a normal person unlike us wandering
Speaker 1: through the countryside, it's quite difficult to see exactly what's
Speaker 1: out there. Because if you just if you're going out
Speaker 1: to a walk along the foot path or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can see the plants, they don't run away. You
Speaker 1: can see all the hawthorn berries and the rose hits
Speaker 1: and everything overhanging in the head rows and are the
Speaker 1: slowes earlier this year right so nams, So you can
Speaker 1: see all that because that doesn't get scared and run
Speaker 1: away and hide when you ride. But all those the
Speaker 1: small vertebrates, all the scround nesting birds, all of the
Speaker 1: small birds, they scurry away when you walk through, particularly
Speaker 1: you got dogs with you, and if your dog's ten
Speaker 1: meters fifty meters in front of you coursing through the headrow,
Speaker 1: they hear when the dog arrives. So you won't see
Speaker 1: anything when you get there. But if like when often
Speaker 1: when we're skibing or wait or waiting for a lando
Speaker 1: or a land agent, what is that the technical taunch.
Speaker 3: Yes, you sit.
Speaker 1: There watching the landscape. And if you sit there quietly,
Speaker 1: even in chainsaw traiergers and things like that, you will
Speaker 1: start to see stuff emerge and come back and just
Speaker 1: sitting still and watching fifteen minutes at a minimum, watching
Speaker 1: the landscape.
Speaker 3: Not reading a book. But this one's all right, the camouflower.
Speaker 1: Should you work us that Linnitz can't see you with soon,
Speaker 1: but you will see more things. So you have to
Speaker 1: stop and sit in a place to find out what's
Speaker 1: actually there. You can't walk through and assess it that way.
Speaker 1: And that's something that's missed in policy, but it's also
Speaker 1: missed in just our own interpretation of what's.
Speaker 3: In a place. You have to get to know somewhere
Speaker 3: to find out what's there.
Speaker 1: And weirdly enough, technology helps of this because now we
Speaker 1: have relatively inexpensive thermal imaging cameras, so you can go
Speaker 1: by even by the bird watching places, and they get
Speaker 1: used for all sorts of purposes. But for basically the
Speaker 1: price of a good neurals digital camera, you can get
Speaker 1: a thermal imaging scope. That means you can sit and
Speaker 1: look at a hedge and see all the stuff that's
Speaker 1: hiding from me. And if you go out about eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock at night into your natured depleted stubble fields and
Speaker 1: just go and see how many badgers are on roaming around,
Speaker 1: how many things are wandering around at night? Look them
Speaker 1: into the headbro see how many things are nesting up
Speaker 1: in there. There's a whole host of wildlife that you
Speaker 1: never really see. But when you have to go and
Speaker 1: look for it, and actually it is almost it's a
Speaker 1: business decision to find it, you do notice a lot
Speaker 1: more there. So you can't rely on the narrative of
Speaker 1: someone saying, oh, no, there's nothing there.
Speaker 3: You have to you have to find out, well, how
Speaker 3: would you look, where did you look? How long did
Speaker 3: you look?
Speaker 1: Are you financially incentivized and not buying things in those places.
Speaker 1: Because this is the difference between what we see online
Speaker 1: and what we experience at work. There are two very
Speaker 1: different countrysides out.
Speaker 2: There, and I think that on the whole, I would
Speaker 2: say that my view with it natural England.
Speaker 3: Just release some data.
Speaker 2: Yes, the other day the one hundred and fifty different
Speaker 2: species are increasing. Bizarrely, our current Secretary of State for
Speaker 2: Dehra took the credit for it. So they go.
Speaker 1: It shows you what brilliant stuff labor's doing. And I
Speaker 1: thought that's amazing. They came into power on July the fourth.
Speaker 1: What do they do?
Speaker 2: Ah and hay pressed are all the great partridges? Why
Speaker 2: we're going to go and breed more now? When that's bollocks?
Speaker 2: Its actually they do to us too, and people like
Speaker 2: us do just us? Just us, yeah, no one else,
Speaker 2: just us now listen. But the other thing I wanted
Speaker 2: to get across, because I'm conscious of the time is
Speaker 2: ramping on, is that one of.
Speaker 3: The things that both.
Speaker 2: That are very key and Richard runs now is just
Speaker 2: south something where he is trying to train young people
Speaker 2: in Wales of how to manage hedo's better as parts
Speaker 2: and parts of the understanding nature the countryside, food farming,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And I am involved with something called the
Speaker 2: Suffolk School's Farm Project, which has an event every single
Speaker 2: year at Trinity Park. And because everyone has to do
Speaker 2: that in these book things, I'm going to read you
Speaker 2: just a little bit of my book because obviously Abby
Speaker 2: will shut the curtains in a minute, because you can't
Speaker 2: escape until you've passed through the gift shop. This is
Speaker 2: like a wave audio book. Yeah, basically, now, this is
Speaker 2: what you do at these knittere busus.
Speaker 3: What you do. It's what you do. You've been doing
Speaker 3: instead of working.
Speaker 1: That's easier than staring at things. Right anyway, this this
Speaker 1: is this is the chapter.
Speaker 2: It is about how you know, because it's all the
Speaker 2: good winging about them old bloody boys they don't understand
Speaker 2: our country ways. Well okay, well let's go and do
Speaker 2: something about it. So we got this thing. I'll read
Speaker 2: this to you. I wait under the spread fingers of
Speaker 2: sweet chestnut. Its leaves cast their rippling pattern on the
Speaker 2: sandy grown The branches overhead are sent bowing and waving
Speaker 2: by intermittent puffs of chill late April breeze. I shuffle
Speaker 2: my feet with impatience, kicking up grit and spiny chestnut husks.
Speaker 2: Laid hedges, each only twenty meters in lengths around me
Speaker 2: on three sides.
Speaker 3: Like a letter you.
Speaker 2: The short length of hawthorn and hazel on my right
Speaker 2: was laid this time last year. The binders, now dried
Speaker 2: and cracked, remain twisted in place. New buds have erupted
Speaker 2: along the laid pleacher from the heels spring upwards shoots
Speaker 2: of precocious coppice growth. I think to myself, that's not
Speaker 2: a bad job on such a poor old hedge. At
Speaker 2: the nine o'clock I see the first group of children
Speaker 2: make their way towards me. They remind me of a
Speaker 2: little of foxhound puppies, all babbling and pushing and shoving
Speaker 2: one another rough, but with no evil intent. Their teacher
Speaker 2: claps her hands and the racket ends abruptly. She turns
Speaker 2: and treats me to a smile of genuine pleasure. We
Speaker 2: recognize one another, meeting on this day each year for
Speaker 2: the past four The Suffolk Schools Farm and Country Fair
Speaker 2: at Trinity Park is an institution well loved by teachers,
Speaker 2: children and exhibitors alike. Over one hundred Suffolk primary schools
Speaker 2: send their pupils to this event, organized and run by
Speaker 2: the Suffolk Agricultural Association. Here they hear about food, farming
Speaker 2: and the countryside from the mouths of farmers, deer stalkers, beekeepers,
Speaker 2: naturalists and a solitary hedge lad. This is the first
Speaker 2: stand of the day for the jolly teacher and her
Speaker 2: class of eight and nine year olds. By two o'clock,
Speaker 2: I know her smile will be well worn. Herding cats
Speaker 2: is tiring, even for experienced hands like hers. Good morning everyone,
Speaker 2: I do speak like that when I go to this event.
Speaker 2: By I heard him, mam, good morning everyone, I say
Speaker 2: to the upturned semicircle of faces.
Speaker 1: I could be on the BBC candy goodle. My name
Speaker 1: is Richard and I'm a hedge layer.
Speaker 2: Where are you from twelve voices, replying a jumbled, high
Speaker 2: pitched charm. I only catch the last word school. I
Speaker 2: turn to the teacher, who smiles again, and she says
Speaker 2: wood breach. I wave at the hedge on my left.
Speaker 1: What's this?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 1: I asked the children. Generally, eleven hands immediately shoot skywards,
Speaker 1: one stays lowered. The twelfth child is distracted. He's watching
Speaker 1: a gun dog training demonstration in the distance. Labradors jumping
Speaker 1: and gates are understand me, more entertaining than hedges in pleachers.
Speaker 3: I point to a.
Speaker 1: Little girl, her hair coiled in elaborate plaits for the answer.
Speaker 1: I see she wears a replica rips which town FC shirt?
Speaker 1: This is promotion year for the tractor boys again, ah,
Speaker 1: and their fan base is widening.
Speaker 2: Her blue wellies make you smile. The decaday to a
Speaker 2: green FOG's holding brollies. She has them wedged on the
Speaker 2: wrong feet a bush, she replies, And not quite, I
Speaker 2: say trees, answers a little boy sporting an Ipswich Town tracksuit.
Speaker 1: No, not trees, knives, says another. He goes against the
Speaker 1: grain hereabouts and wears a black beady hat with an
Speaker 1: arsenal badge.
Speaker 2: No, not quite. The gundog fan turns around a hedge,
Speaker 2: he states, matter of facting, I know his sweatshirt sports
Speaker 2: a John Deere tractor in blazon lom niveuf yea cy infuse.
Speaker 2: Punching my right fist into my left palm. My exuberance
Speaker 2: spooks the audience, and the front row steps back half
Speaker 2: astride they bump into the rank behind surprises This odd
Speaker 2: tall man in overalls is so excited about a mundane,
Speaker 2: leafy line of things that look like small trees. I persevere,
Speaker 2: telling them why we have hedges on farms and how
Speaker 2: we manage them, and what benefits they bring for wildlife,
Speaker 2: and why they ensure we have healthy food on our plates.
Speaker 2: I ask them what mammals they think live in a hedge.
Speaker 1: Their replies are eclectic.
Speaker 2: Some are obvious mice, rats, rabbits, snakes, other leaves meat, permused.
Speaker 1: Cats, says one little girl at the back.
Speaker 2: I have a cat called Rugby, she adds confidentially, as
Speaker 2: if imparting scandalous gossip. One is a spiky little animal,
Speaker 2: I add as a k foo, and John Deere finally
Speaker 2: gives me the answer. I seek hedgehogs, he announces, yes.
Speaker 2: I warm to my subject.
Speaker 1: Even their name reveals their preferred home, doesn't it. And
Speaker 1: why would a thick, dense hedge be better for hedgehogs?
Speaker 3: I ask?
Speaker 1: My audience pauses briefly, then, like Roman senators, all raise
Speaker 1: their hands. They don't like the rain, says one boy
Speaker 1: his zips which town baseball cap is too big for
Speaker 1: his head het blackberries. Another little girl answers her clothes,
Speaker 1: revealing allegiance to neither football club nor track to manufacturer.
Speaker 1: She prefers Taylor swift. What if a cage provides protection
Speaker 1: from being eaten? What might like to eat a hedgehog?
Speaker 3: I query?
Speaker 2: This draws the gang up short. It is apparent they
Speaker 2: can't imagine anything wanting to crunch through all of those
Speaker 2: sharp spines and anyway. In their gentle world of animal stories,
Speaker 2: the hedgehogs are friends to all.
Speaker 3: They have yet to learn.
Speaker 1: The true nature is far removed from the thing they
Speaker 1: read about in books. Real nature is a series of
Speaker 1: terrifying episodes of eating or being eaten. I help the
Speaker 1: kids to find the right answer to the hedgehog's bow.
Speaker 1: It's black and white, I add, and the hands gull up.
Speaker 2: Zebra skunk says another.
Speaker 1: No, No, not a skunk or a zebra.
Speaker 3: They don't even live in Britain.
Speaker 1: I'm begin to plea what else is black and white?
Speaker 3: And is a predator?
Speaker 1: Willing the right answer out of the class. Finally, the
Speaker 1: smallest boy in the front row raises his hand half heartedly,
Speaker 1: a motion that could be passed off as an adjustment
Speaker 1: to his hair.
Speaker 2: Is it a badger?
Speaker 3: He quavers?
Speaker 6: Yes, I say, Badgers eat hedgehogs, and the thick of
Speaker 6: the hedge, the more chance a hedgehog has of escape.
Speaker 6: I realize my question and answer session wasn't as fascinating
Speaker 6: for the children as it was enlightening for me. I
Speaker 6: grabbed my planting spade and hawthorn whip.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Who wants me to help me plant a hedge and
Speaker 2: give the hedgehogs a new home? I asked, and twelve
Speaker 2: hands shoot up. I give the spade. The little boy
Speaker 2: who knows what a badger is. In each tile takes
Speaker 2: their turn at digging, planting, heeling, and guarding, leaving a
Speaker 2: slightly crooked line of fledgling new hedge in their wake.
Speaker 2: I think that's a job well done, is it, I say,
Speaker 2: and they agree wholehearted with a cheer. They say goodbye
Speaker 2: and wander off together, chattering and giggling. Their teacher turns
Speaker 2: and smiles a thank you over her shoulder. Then, with
Speaker 2: arms outstretched, she shepherd her charges in the direction of a.
Speaker 1: Pig handling demonstration. The next class live and for my
Speaker 1: green cave. Good morning everyone. My name is Richard not,
Speaker 1: I'm a hedge layer.
Speaker 3: Where are you from?
Speaker 1: And so we're not now And isn't it a tragedy
Speaker 1: that those kids from Woodbridge, hardly stay in Metropolis, don't
Speaker 1: know what a badger is, but they're more likely to
Speaker 1: know what a zebras are skunk that all these foreign species.
Speaker 2: So therefore, that's why I wrote the book, because I
Speaker 2: wanted to go and try and help educate, and that
Speaker 2: is why each week Richard Callum and I do the
Speaker 2: Countryside Podcast, because what we're trying to do is go
Speaker 2: and not force stuff down people's throats, but do a
Speaker 2: little bit of education in a lighthearted way. Although we'll
Speaker 2: be honest, if primary school kids did listen to the
Speaker 2: country Slide podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, oh you're the lucky ones.
Speaker 3: That's the the ones we don't in this country.
Speaker 1: That's I think, that's basically you're the only people who
Speaker 1: don't listen at this podcast. They were very big in
Speaker 1: sales career. Yes, sorry, we haven't got the data for
Speaker 1: nord career, but we we sort of started it in
Speaker 1: the middle of your winter hedgelaying and coppicing season last
Speaker 1: year on November and we thought, well we'd try it
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.
Speaker 1: And so we do this stuff and then Callum is
Speaker 1: a he's a photographer. He's an urban eye photographer of it. It
Speaker 1: loves wild food and looks covering and trying to get
Speaker 1: his kids more into the outdoors. So we sort of
Speaker 1: covers that heart of it. We we didn't really have
Speaker 1: a plan when we started, still don't now, to be fair.
Speaker 3: No, it's more of a.
Speaker 1: Sort of damage limitation now than a clan. But we
Speaker 1: we found an audience we didn't expect. We found an
Speaker 1: audience that somebody told we both we've boys got stories
Speaker 1: very similar. Somebody is saying that when they're on their
Speaker 1: own in the tractor, and if you drive a traped
Speaker 1: around a fielder particularly it's a big field, you're there
Speaker 1: for hours just going up and down. I'm like doing
Speaker 1: whatever machinery it is. You're on your own. You are
Speaker 1: very isolated, on your own in a landscape. You can't
Speaker 1: see another human being. And they really like our podcast
Speaker 1: because it's stupid, it's silly. It's like being in the
Speaker 1: pub listening to three people bicker about stuff and be
Speaker 1: very very silly, but occasionally say something sensible, but there's
Speaker 1: more by accident.
Speaker 3: Than by design. But they couldn't get access to the podcast.
Speaker 3: One week.
Speaker 1: One person I was talking to and it said that
Speaker 1: was that was crushing for them because they couldn't hear
Speaker 1: our stupidity for what but that one thing you were doing,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, we can never stop. Now We've got
Speaker 1: to keep going just for that one.
Speaker 2: It's peculiar because I think, you know, this education thing
Speaker 2: is also saying in the countryside it is quite an
Speaker 2: isolated job. And unfortunately I work with Richard gouldmight my
Speaker 2: business partner, and we work together and we usually have
Speaker 2: a dog with this.
Speaker 1: But you know, reural life these days is not like
Speaker 1: it used to be. You know fifty sixty years good is.
Speaker 2: That one man con virtually farm a thousand acres on
Speaker 2: his top and so therefore it is an isolated profession.
Speaker 2: So therefore the podcast was certainly something where we were
Speaker 2: speaking to our own bubble. But also I know that
Speaker 2: we're speaking slightly out with that bubble. When I went
Speaker 2: to go and Oliver the hedges of the Duke of
Speaker 2: Norfolk's placer Aaron Well actually peppery, and he'd look around
Speaker 2: and he went after you.
Speaker 3: Go, I do like that country slide thing you do
Speaker 3: may and.
Speaker 1: So that's the senior peer of the realm. He listens.
Speaker 2: But also when we go to various places, we had
Speaker 2: this joke but for ages, you know, when this book
Speaker 2: was coming out, I was just shamelessly plugging it all
Speaker 2: the time, and so Richard and Callum were just going to.
Speaker 3: Say, what book coming out?
Speaker 2: I didn't know that, And that was just one of
Speaker 2: the standing jokes, you know, was that I'd never talk
Speaker 2: about my.
Speaker 3: Book, although that's obviously that's what I did do.
Speaker 2: I'd be walking through Morrison's in dis and I get
Speaker 2: some old boy come up.
Speaker 1: You've got a book coming out.
Speaker 2: I like that, and.
Speaker 1: I knew that that's what it was, was that we
Speaker 1: had suddenly struck a chord that you've got the Duke
Speaker 1: of Norfolk and had a good old boy from Norfolk who
Speaker 1: all find it quite fun.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I suppose we better ought.
Speaker 2: To go and wrap all this up because he's good
Speaker 2: people who I've got to listen to some music too,
Speaker 2: and a drink cider, which I think is the isn't
Speaker 2: how the main reason for coming to a folk festival.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any cider here, man.
Speaker 3: No, he's a good side of somewhere, is there that way?
Speaker 1: People saying that way that he's been on the side
Speaker 1: and that's what our his eyes.
Speaker 3: Are done, this wild flunking.
Speaker 1: At five pm, I thought, actually, do you know it's
Speaker 1: an important thing we did.
Speaker 2: I bought duel flunking to a wider audience. But he
Speaker 2: didn't think twelve flunking was a thing.
Speaker 1: He just thought I'd invented a word, and I said,
Speaker 1: and he, to his delight, he saw.
Speaker 3: That we got dwarlf flunking here.
Speaker 1: It's a five and a half hour drive back to
Speaker 1: North Wales. I think he's going to hang around if
Speaker 1: it's like an anthropological exhibition expedition now, because we're seeing
Speaker 1: these people on the other side of the country that
Speaker 1: you ever see doing a strange thing. I know.
Speaker 3: And he says, that comes from North Wales, my partners
Speaker 3: of Lincolnshire. So yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: So so anyway, I don't think we has anyone gotten
Speaker 2: burning questions they really want to say, because otherwise we
Speaker 2: have to go lead them.
Speaker 1: Yes, madam, are you have been south NORTHLK.
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 7: And the farmer had a grant put in yes and
Speaker 7: you can see it stretching away in feears where I
Speaker 7: poll go keep outside. Yes, they've taken the hedges are growing,
Speaker 7: but they're full of plastic chees. Yes, who is going
Speaker 7: to remove them? Because I don't see anyone anywhere around
Speaker 7: my sword South Norfolk area removing these and we wear.
Speaker 2: About some typing off on you it's okay, yeah, well
Speaker 2: they will do that. Part of the aren't is they
Speaker 2: have to So therefore if they don't, they're in CONTRENTI
Speaker 2: with the BN eleven grant under Countryside Stewardship, so it
Speaker 2: has to be removed. But they are going to be
Speaker 2: on for certainly on that slightly lighter clay that you
Speaker 2: are there, they would certainly be on for four years.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they're not going to have done their job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because are you seeing.
Speaker 7: I just think our whole country is admitted?
Speaker 1: Are they going quite brittle and cloudy? Yes? They're possibly
Speaker 1: biodegradable ones which you can lead in place, but they
Speaker 1: don't work very well, so they will break down. But
Speaker 1: they might break down possibly not in my life, yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty years. Yeah, but then that's a tick in a
Speaker 1: box as well. Might they might be able to leave
Speaker 1: them on for that per Who do you report it
Speaker 1: to some one of your clients? Is it?
Speaker 3: Bran?
Speaker 1: I just think that claxing one of mine. Who would
Speaker 1: you report them to? I? And you report him to anybody?
Speaker 2: I think what you do is it might be an idea,
Speaker 2: is that if just to shock him a bit, if
Speaker 2: you go and see me all right, and you're BN eleven,
Speaker 2: aren't they supposed to be off by now, and you'll
Speaker 2: think you've work for the Rural Payments Agency or shit
Speaker 2: himself and they'll be offering.
Speaker 3: Them back to you.
Speaker 1: Do you can turn up wearing mustard cords and exactly
Speaker 1: then I can loan you this jacket and you go
Speaker 1: along and say hello, hugo yeah, and they'll go, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, if.
Speaker 2: You're quite right, and I'm being flippant, oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not your local, are no. I mean it's the same
Speaker 2: thing with silas rap. It's the same thing with so
Speaker 2: many single use plasters, and it's but you see that
Speaker 2: why do we have to have them? Why do we
Speaker 2: have to have them because we've got an over abundance
Speaker 2: of non native deer. We wouldn't need to have those
Speaker 2: tubes if it wasn't for the fact that we have
Speaker 2: a non existent deer management policy in this country, and
Speaker 2: we've got munk jack fallow. To a lesser degree, Chinese
Speaker 2: watered it and in other parts of the country. Seeker
Speaker 2: do jobs every single mouthful that a monk jack takes,
Speaker 2: and hedgerows are their favorite, particularly Hawthorne. Everything on mouthful
Speaker 2: that the monk jack takes was never by their right.
Speaker 3: There's the take.
Speaker 2: There are non native species, so we don't need them here.
Speaker 2: So until such time as we go and get our
Speaker 2: dear problem under control, we're still going to have to
Speaker 2: put single use plastic into the environment.
Speaker 3: And that's wrong. This was the question in the back
Speaker 3: of the using different species.
Speaker 2: Yes compared to ten years ago. No, No, but I
Speaker 2: tell you what interestingly, the and we had him on
Speaker 2: the podcast, actually guy called Harry Hoblin who runs by
Speaker 2: Matrie Nurseries over near Thetford's here and Bridge. No, it's
Speaker 2: there's just justin justin Suffolk.
Speaker 3: Actually on this.
Speaker 1: The he is using seed provenance from south of the
Speaker 1: door doing so. Therefore, although it will be and written
Speaker 1: in the back of the book, I've got all the
Speaker 1: species that I advocate for Suffolk hedges.
Speaker 2: That they work well in the various soils across and
Speaker 2: are listed of those down. But the seed which he's
Speaker 2: growing from from south of the door doin same species,
Speaker 2: but they have evolved so that they are slightly slightly
Speaker 2: more drought tolerant. The other thing because of the change
Speaker 2: in climate is we are trying to plant plugs rather
Speaker 2: than bear root because that extra bit of ready root
Speaker 2: growth is a is an extra little bonus. But no,
Speaker 2: I'm not wouldn't change the species Suffolk hedges a suffolk hedge,
Speaker 2: but it's where the seed is sourced.
Speaker 3: From originally that is changing the suffout In North Wales.
Speaker 1: We are changing slightly so we can grow sweet chestnut
Speaker 1: now that we couldn't ten years ago, fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: but sweet chest and we've now a viable species just
Speaker 1: because of that slightly.
Speaker 3: Longer growing season. But slightly you've changed climate. Yes, question
Speaker 3: here it's absolute.
Speaker 8: The educating children young pupil at the present gun to
Speaker 8: understand it. What to expand vocational training for the other street.
Speaker 8: Is there any representation to government apprenticeships or other top
Speaker 8: training for your professionals.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to have an apprenticeship. Really, we're being hedge
Speaker 2: layer because mine is the season. Occupation starts in first
Speaker 2: September and the season then finishes on the last.
Speaker 3: Day of April.
Speaker 2: So what tends to happen is that an apprentice, quite
Speaker 2: understand is going to say what the hell am I
Speaker 2: going to do?
Speaker 1: Or something I want to be paid.
Speaker 2: I've been taken on by this, so that they're insufficiently
Speaker 2: flexible to work for these rather niche tasks like hours. Also,
Speaker 2: there is no in Suffolk, none of the one and
Speaker 2: only agricultural college that we have hasn't got set up
Speaker 2: an apprentice ship which they could then go back on
Speaker 2: their day release, So they would have to go back
Speaker 2: onto college and they would either do fencing or they
Speaker 2: would do tree felling, which neither of which are anything
Speaker 2: to do with with hedge lay.
Speaker 1: The only successful apprenticeship i've seen that was funded by
Speaker 1: the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and they
Speaker 1: funded a hedge laying apprenticeship with a chat who's got
Speaker 1: hedgelaying businesses sort of over towards safrom Walden down that way, and.
Speaker 2: He's got quite a few guys out working for him
Speaker 2: and that worked quite well. But it's obviously unsustainable that
Speaker 2: you would have to go and rely upon charities to
Speaker 2: go and provide that.
Speaker 3: So no short answer.
Speaker 2: In England, to my knowledge, there is no really meaningful surendy.
Speaker 1: Most of them argue the colleges do something within a
Speaker 1: state management three hours of education and of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: spartial college I think is the only one that does
Speaker 1: maybe as part of a gamekeeping of courses. Which is
Speaker 1: the last college that does gamekeeping with any serious degree?
Speaker 3: This lady here, Oh yeah, there's.
Speaker 9: Lots of great stuff about kind of farms and everything
Speaker 9: doing and d. You're probably speaking to a converted audience already.
Speaker 9: But if there was anything that you could get the
Speaker 9: public passes to lobbying the government to actually change I
Speaker 9: know it's impossible, but one thing that would actually make
Speaker 9: a huge difference to this whole issue. What kind of
Speaker 9: area would that be in?
Speaker 1: Don't mean to go for us, you've got a better
Speaker 1: you'll have a better answer.
Speaker 2: My would be is that farmers conservationists need consistency. So
Speaker 2: therefore there's two reasons why.
Speaker 3: We don't we have inconsistency.
Speaker 2: One is because nature is sometimes used as a political
Speaker 2: porn a tool because you can go and draw on heartstrings.
Speaker 1: You know, one hand is going I'm not going to
Speaker 1: let your house housing be held up because of.
Speaker 2: Newts and bats, I think was what our Prime minister said,
Speaker 2: or Angela Reno one of those people anyway, so that
Speaker 2: was a failure, so therefore to stop using nature as
Speaker 2: a tool. But that's more of a sort of tone
Speaker 2: rather than policy. But I think one of the most
Speaker 2: important policies is that there should be a matrix of
Speaker 2: how we study what's worked there is. They're very good
Speaker 2: at giving us money for me to go and plant
Speaker 2: a hedge, to copy the hedge layer hedge gap one
Speaker 2: up to side one up, to.
Speaker 3: Go and incrementally cut one.
Speaker 2: But what there's no funding for is to pay for
Speaker 2: the ecologists to go out and honestly go and say, okay,
Speaker 2: this hedge was laid three years ago, what is the
Speaker 2: abundance of species now compared when we first started. So
Speaker 2: we don't know what is actually efficacious in government policy.
Speaker 2: Now I can tell you what's efficacious actually with the
Speaker 2: headeros and boundaries grant, until Labor came into power, was
Speaker 2: most of the options in there. Because I wrote a
Speaker 2: huge amount of the policy for the Hegeros and Boundaries grant.
Speaker 2: Because Janet Hues who was the senior civil servant in Elms.
Speaker 2: She has fed up me being rude.
Speaker 1: To her on Twitter, so she'd all right, gobshite go
Speaker 1: and okay, you can't write the stuff that rid of you.
Speaker 1: Boy she did, she said, I maneuvered you like a
Speaker 1: chess piece over here. So she said, so it's your
Speaker 1: fault of it all goes wrong. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that we haven't because we haven't got a.
Speaker 2: Value on a yellhammer or limit. There's not a financial
Speaker 2: value on it. So therefore we need to see. Therefore
Speaker 2: the value is that is all our taxpayers' money on
Speaker 2: doing all this this environmental good. We need to see
Speaker 2: if it's actually worked, is it giving value for money?
Speaker 2: And I don't see anything in any government policy where
Speaker 2: they say, let's see if this has worked. They just
Speaker 2: take it away and they give it back, and they
Speaker 2: take it away and give it back. So wildlife will
Speaker 2: never go and improve our careers. Hang by dangling threads
Speaker 2: a lot of the time, and you know species will
Speaker 2: go and drop off the perch quite literally. And so
Speaker 2: therefore I think one of the most sensible things is
Speaker 2: to go and say right before we start planting bloody
Speaker 2: forty seven thousand miles a new hedge or x billion
Speaker 2: trees or absent. Let's see if what we're doing already
Speaker 2: and we've been paying millions of tax players pounds out
Speaker 2: on is it working, and let's have some honesty. I
Speaker 2: don't want to hear from certain charities who are going
Speaker 2: to say everything's good, now.
Speaker 3: Give you your money.
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear from a bunch of people
Speaker 2: who work for a water board who said, nothing to see.
Speaker 1: Now it's all dead. We can built that's fine. Don't
Speaker 1: want hear from them. I going I want to hear.
Speaker 2: Some ecologists who are straight bats who are actually working
Speaker 2: on behalf of the farmer who has got to go
Speaker 2: and put his next granting and say is it worth
Speaker 2: my while applying for the next year, and then we
Speaker 2: can go and tell the second true state for death
Speaker 2: or if it works. I think farming data is something
Speaker 2: that should be a policy and should be adopted or
Speaker 2: should be well funded.
Speaker 3: Abu tiver one more, one more? Which was this lady?
Speaker 1: Here was last while I broke Thank you.
Speaker 10: We have lots of really good hedges where we live
Speaker 10: in Cataterum, Yeah, but very few hedge bow trees yeah,
Speaker 10: I've then obviously the worst than you're rich of all
Speaker 10: being played gone. Can farmers get it grant to put hedge.
Speaker 1: Row trees seven pound twenty five per tree planted every.
Speaker 2: One hundred meters. Personally, I hate trees and hedges. And
Speaker 2: the reason being is because I said, I've got youther
Speaker 2: hamm on that on gray partches going on there for
Speaker 2: the expert, because those two hate them because that's where
Speaker 2: predators perch. But I've just down Earsham, just down the
Speaker 2: road from here, just finished their hedgerow management plan.
Speaker 1: Fascinating.
Speaker 2: I couldn't work out where there were so many fantastic
Speaker 2: old oaks in the trees, and interestingly, underneath the hedges
Speaker 2: were still doing it right despite the shade, and there weren't.
Speaker 1: There were brews of great partridges there left, right and center.
Speaker 2: They've got a very very good gamekeeper there who's absolutely
Speaker 2: nailed on his lovely old boy looks like a klobbieds
Speaker 2: absolutely hell of a chat.
Speaker 1: But trees everywhere.
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, I can't work better.
Speaker 2: I've never seen so many massive oaks, but I could
Speaker 2: tell they obviously weren't part of an old wood. But
Speaker 2: you know what it was turned out it used to
Speaker 2: be the largest stud in Britain for Hackney carriage horses.
Speaker 2: So all them old London cabby horses were actually bred Earsham,
Speaker 2: but they farmed them like cattle. And of course a
Speaker 2: horse doesn't green lot too much sun or wind or
Speaker 2: rain on its back. So those big old oaks they
Speaker 2: left there intentionally for when it was a big old
Speaker 2: hunting park in the sixteenth and fifteenth century. They'd left
Speaker 2: those oaks there intentionally to be covered. So I have
Speaker 2: to say, I'm coming round to the idea that actually
Speaker 2: trees and hedges aren't that terrible because Earsham they clearly.
Speaker 1: Had a huge amount of game and a rare game
Speaker 1: like gray partridge. They had lap wings out on.
Speaker 2: One field where they've got a nest brooded off, and
Speaker 2: of course lap wings and curly don't really like trees.
Speaker 2: Obviously Isham they didn't mind some coming around to it.
Speaker 2: So yes, to answer your question, there is a grant
Speaker 2: for it. And what I put in is crab app it.
Speaker 2: And the reason I put crab apple inner hedge is
Speaker 2: because you've got more fruit and if the tractor driver
Speaker 2: with his flail does catch it, it's not the end
Speaker 2: of the tree actually makes it better. And if I'm
Speaker 2: going to plant trees and hedgerows, I plant.
Speaker 3: Them at the end as a little spinny.
Speaker 1: And so that's my own personal quirk. Doesn't mean it's right,
Speaker 1: but it's that's.
Speaker 3: What I liked. Yeah, we do it.
Speaker 1: We make a corner triangle, corner bit, a different habitat
Speaker 1: within a When the hedge Goldie, my business partner, he.
Speaker 3: Said, trees belonging woods and that's it.
Speaker 2: He's so it'd have been a lot quicker, but I
Speaker 2: know it would be nice to see him back.
Speaker 3: And there is a grant. Thank you so much, ed One.
Speaker 1: Shut the tact.
Speaker 3: Thank you you, Splu Michid, thank you too much for
Speaker 3: providing the book. Sorry I'm being nice to you. And
Speaker 3: they're available over there. Thank you Abby.
Speaker 1: I'll even sign them if you want.
Speaker 3: I'll sign them if you want. You were covered in
Speaker 3: spiders right night, you know,