Speaker 1: Hello, Richard. How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm very well, Richard, how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 1: Now listen, there's tragedy has befallen us because Callum isn't here.
Speaker 2: He's dead.
Speaker 1: No worse than that. He's on his way to up
Speaker 1: the A one to Scotland. He is currently going up.
Speaker 1: I've just come off the phone with him and he's
Speaker 1: in his car heading north, probably listening to garage and
Speaker 1: Rave because he's down with the kids and he's on
Speaker 1: his way up north and he's going to be photographing
Speaker 1: and talking with a lady who paints beautiful paintings with
Speaker 1: a pheasant feather. So he's going off up there. Is
Speaker 1: it a good enough excuse to miss our guests? I
Speaker 1: think the jury's out.
Speaker 2: I mean the dedication is in the room here, isn't it?
Speaker 3: Well, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: Professionalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you.
Speaker 1: Know that's middle name, Richard, Professionalism, prido. That is as
Speaker 1: you're known as. Although admittedly, of course I didn't go
Speaker 1: to the shooting show. I was doing other things so
Speaker 1: which you two did.
Speaker 2: We barely went to the shooting show. We just ran around,
Speaker 2: got in trouble and got kicked off stands. Mostly and
Speaker 2: didn't get invited to parties.
Speaker 1: I listened to that. You know, I think probably you
Speaker 1: know you didn't miss me that much, except for the
Speaker 1: fact that occasionally my celebrity hedge layer of fame does
Speaker 1: open the doors to occasional drinks parties to people who
Speaker 1: have like my bill hooks, which is well and who.
Speaker 2: They like the angle of your bill hook.
Speaker 3: Well exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Although I haven't been using my billhook much of late today,
Speaker 1: I have been planting.
Speaker 2: Hedges and we've had a family outing, haven't you a.
Speaker 3: Complete family outing? Yes, it was.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: We not only had my lovely wife Claire helping, but
Speaker 1: we also had my son Charlie, who's on half term,
Speaker 1: and so the three of us plus Gilby we got
Speaker 1: planting today because it's a funny old thing, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean we about November time, not long after the
Speaker 1: budget we started really quite flapping because we lost two
Speaker 1: very big and one smaller contract for hedge laying because
Speaker 1: the government and its infinite wisdomen has decided to freeze
Speaker 1: the capital works grunts under Country Science Stewardship, which meant
Speaker 1: that a lot of work which we were supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing suddenly stopped and we went, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we have got no income coming. And so I rang
Speaker 1: around some of the farmers who we'd planned work for
Speaker 1: in the future, who had different schemes. And it's remarkable,
Speaker 1: And that's one of those humbling things when you realize
Speaker 1: that actually a you, yourself are valued and also your
Speaker 1: work is valued. Is that these farmers went, okay, we
Speaker 1: can shift some things about. You come and do this,
Speaker 1: you come and get that, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we've now got thirty three days left of the hedging season,
Speaker 1: and we've got thirty eight days work, which try.
Speaker 2: And fit it so working weekends then.
Speaker 1: Basically, So therefore there was a complete family outing to
Speaker 1: try and get a load of hedge planting finished for
Speaker 1: one of these said generous farmers who employ us and say, yes,
Speaker 1: come on, go and get this done.
Speaker 3: So, yes, that's what I've been up to.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'll be quick with mine because we've got more
Speaker 2: important things to do this week. But I was doing
Speaker 2: TV stuff today briefly. So if you're a TV company
Speaker 2: doing a show and you come to North Wales in spring,
Speaker 2: you decide you're going to do foraging. So it's a
Speaker 2: bit of a toss up as to whether we go
Speaker 2: into a woodland or whether we go out on the coast.
Speaker 2: And this time it was on the coast, So it's
Speaker 2: going to be on ITV's Coast and Country. I think
Speaker 2: it's ITV Whales's version of Country File. Okay, So I
Speaker 2: went out there and it was basically me standing on
Speaker 2: a beach while media people faft and someone near very
Speaker 2: nearly dropped a incredibly expensive gimbal and camera and broadcast
Speaker 2: rig into the sea water.
Speaker 3: Oh dear, it wasn't your fault, was it.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't my fault.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: I just watched and then trying to convert them into
Speaker 2: the idea that you can eat limpets. Really, so this
Speaker 2: is this is the thing. Limpits are a bit like
Speaker 2: game meat. If you cook them correctly, they're actually quite good. Okay,
Speaker 2: but you've got most people just boil them and then
Speaker 2: they go, well that tastes like eating a pencil rubber. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but no, there's ways to do it. But for another episode,
Speaker 2: let's do something more important show.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's do that.
Speaker 1: So we have our monthly and soon to become we're
Speaker 1: going to have guess more often because we think that
Speaker 1: they're exciting.
Speaker 2: Now we've got more guests than months.
Speaker 1: That's right, exactly, that's exactly.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Now I've got a free called Chris who is a thatcher,
Speaker 1: and he and I are being world founding together a bit.
Speaker 1: And I also wrote an article about him being a thatcher.
Speaker 1: And I went up on the scaffolding as he was
Speaker 1: doing this thatching. And people come and watch me hedge laying,
Speaker 1: and they get what I do after about fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: of watching, and they think I could probably do that,
Speaker 1: to be honest, and then they ever go and they
Speaker 1: make a bit of a faff of it, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't work very well. But to be perfect, I was
Speaker 1: hedge laying is a little bit smoking mirrors.
Speaker 3: It's quiteey to do.
Speaker 1: I sat next to Chris up on this scaffolding and
Speaker 1: watched him. I was what six feet away from where
Speaker 1: he's working, and I watched it work at math one.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how on earth you did that?
Speaker 1: And I stood next to you. It's like a really
Speaker 1: good magician.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: He also happens to have a twin brother called Andy,
Speaker 1: who is not only the younger brother, he's the better
Speaker 1: looking brother, and he's the clever brother. So I thought,
Speaker 1: could we get Chris on and talk about thatching. No,
Speaker 1: because we don't want to know about Chris, because basically
Speaker 1: I don't know what he does. It's far too technical.
Speaker 1: So instead I thought, I'm going to get Andy, his
Speaker 1: younger and better looking brother on, because he not only
Speaker 1: understands the thatching gig, having been from this amazing family
Speaker 1: of thatchers, but secondly, he very wisely stopped being a
Speaker 1: Thatcher and he went and joined the army, went into
Speaker 1: the Royal Engineers, which are the only acceptable corps in
Speaker 1: the British Army, because my father was a sapper as well,
Speaker 1: and he went off and did some proper soldiering in places.
Speaker 1: And then he left the army and he went into academia,
Speaker 1: and he suddenly drifted.
Speaker 3: Back to.
Speaker 1: His roots. I guess, and we are too day, Richard
Speaker 1: going to be talking to Andy Dodson, who I think
Speaker 1: is probably the only doctor of reads. Andy Dodson, Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to country.
Speaker 4: Slide, Hi, Richard and Richard. The Doctor's not quite there yet,
Speaker 4: a couple of years left to push, but it's getting
Speaker 4: there slowly a bit. Surely it'll happen one day. Say
Speaker 4: that enough?
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, look, do you know you're you're closer to being
Speaker 1: a doctor than our current minister. What's it called is
Speaker 1: for being a solicitor or our Chancellor of the Exchequer
Speaker 1: is to being an economist.
Speaker 2: So therefore, yeah, I've just looked at your CV and
Speaker 2: actually it all seems to be true. So that makes
Speaker 2: you a cut ahead of half of the cabinet at
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, quite so, Now andy, why have we got
Speaker 1: you on? And I tell you one of the things
Speaker 1: that I'm fascinated about is as a wildfowler, I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time in reading beds, and as a
Speaker 1: person who lives in rural Suffolk, I know that the
Speaker 1: water read is something that a lot of our houses
Speaker 1: are factory that I live in a seventeenth century house,
Speaker 1: and once upon a time this was thatched. You can
Speaker 1: tell why the pitch of the roof. Your brother told
Speaker 1: me that, and it's now got tiles on. So tell
Speaker 1: me reads. What are their importance too?
Speaker 3: Well? Houses, I guess.
Speaker 4: So obviously, going back quite a bit, architecture wise, people
Speaker 4: would use whatever material was local to them, and it
Speaker 4: will vary quite a bit. But so you go up
Speaker 4: to Scotland for example, you get the buildings which are
Speaker 4: thatched with heaber, but they're not like I said, you
Speaker 4: come down to Suffolk, Norfolk, et cetera. The traditional material
Speaker 4: used was read for the most part, and then back
Speaker 4: in the eighties or nineties, I can't remember precisely when
Speaker 4: it was changing planning law.
Speaker 1: Like for likes.
Speaker 4: So where you've got listed buildings, what goes off must
Speaker 4: go back on again. So if you've got a read
Speaker 4: property like what yours probably used to be, I guess
Speaker 4: Richard Freeds goes off, it's got to come back on again.
Speaker 4: So therefore the supply, just from a thatching perspective, read
Speaker 4: is important because we need that material to be able
Speaker 4: to keep up with our built environment, heritage and meet
Speaker 4: current planning requirements. And that is on the simplest terms,
Speaker 4: that's why it's important for buildings.
Speaker 1: Okay, then, now, am I right in saying that water
Speaker 1: read is a lot longer lasting than straw.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is definitely the case. So straw and cone read,
Speaker 4: which you'll tend to find down more down my neckerwards
Speaker 4: in the in the southwest. You looking at somewhere in
Speaker 4: the region about twenty to twenty five years read depending
Speaker 4: on the environment's orientation, house and all the rest of
Speaker 4: it fifty sixty years. My brother has stripped off read
Speaker 4: which has been over over one hundred years old and
Speaker 4: literally just been What will happen is the thatch will
Speaker 4: come up, It will assess the or she will assess
Speaker 4: the roof. Does it all need to come off? Yale?
Speaker 4: If not, the top layer kind of come off and
Speaker 4: you can just keep on overlayering and overlaying it. If
Speaker 4: you look at what my brother's just put up on
Speaker 4: LinkedIn today, there's a really really excellent example of that,
Speaker 4: where that she's just been overlaid and overlaid and overlaid,
Speaker 4: and you get like the meter's worth a thatch. The
Speaker 4: rafters would have failed completely completely snapped, but it will
Speaker 4: be self supporting enough to it's kind of hold its
Speaker 4: own ways up, which is quite incredible. Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that post earlier on and it was
Speaker 2: I was thinking, that is how much of that what
Speaker 2: is apparent to structural form is actually the read itself
Speaker 2: is the thatch, and how much is what Like on
Speaker 2: my house, it's all all Welsh slate tiles, so it
Speaker 2: has to be a really strong ridgeboard to support all
Speaker 2: that you know is the read is self supporting. It
Speaker 2: is architecturally stable to a point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to a certain degree. I mean the plus side.
Speaker 4: I mean, if it's just like a foot worth of
Speaker 4: that load wise, it's not that horrendous. Obviously, the thicker
Speaker 4: it gets, it all kind of last. And there's a lot
Speaker 4: of fudge factor built into kind of rafter design and
Speaker 4: all the rest of it, so it will kind of
Speaker 4: it'll last. But if you look at some of those
Speaker 4: photos and those those ash pole raft is held together
Speaker 4: with their cobwebs and a bit of wishful for thinking,
Speaker 4: really there wasn't much left of them. It was a
Speaker 4: bit so I was like, I looked at it, I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't want to be crawling around on that route.
Speaker 2: I was about to say, yeah, no.
Speaker 4: And Chris did come a cropper a few years back
Speaker 4: because of the opinion of a year of a certain
Speaker 4: building control officer and said, oh, they'll be fine, and
Speaker 4: my brother said, no, it's not going to last. And
Speaker 4: one did actually well and back and bright in the face,
Speaker 4: and there's a few interesting conversations which went on after that.
Speaker 1: I can imagine one of the things that I'm interested
Speaker 1: with when it comes to water read and stuff like
Speaker 1: this is this is something that your brother highlighted to
Speaker 1: me a few years ago, is that much like thatching straw,
Speaker 1: there is a massive shortage in this country. So we
Speaker 1: here in East Anglia in particular, you know we should
Speaker 1: be and as you said, we now have to we'd
Speaker 1: like for like, so do this where is our reed
Speaker 1: coming from? Because we're not cutting it here, are we?
Speaker 4: So a certain amount is you can go back as
Speaker 4: far as the nineteen twenties. There was an identified shortage
Speaker 4: back then, so but then it started to come more
Speaker 4: to the four in the nineteen sixties with the Rural
Speaker 4: Industry's Bureau raised that this was an increase in problem.
Speaker 4: And then as kind of times have changed and you've
Speaker 4: got in the latter half of the twentieth century, there
Speaker 4: was so much wetland drainage and the view is we've
Speaker 4: probably lost up to about fifty percent of our reed
Speaker 4: beds in the second half of the year the century.
Speaker 4: So there's an immediate supply issue there because there's not
Speaker 4: enough of it. And then when you add to that
Speaker 4: the decline in the number of reed cutters and there's
Speaker 4: some really good research carried out a couple of years
Speaker 4: back by a lovely lady called Hannah Millet, who has
Speaker 4: just done a master's in architecture, and she identified there's
Speaker 4: only about thirty five reed cutters and that's including part
Speaker 4: time and semi retired and the whole the UK, including
Speaker 4: Northern Ireland. That's obviously a bit of a problem. So
Speaker 4: now depending on whose figures you use supply the usage
Speaker 4: you're looking at, estimates of UK grown read about between
Speaker 4: ten two two and a half three percent and the
Speaker 4: rest is all imported, which has got an absolutely bonkers
Speaker 4: of math.
Speaker 1: Where's it coming from? Then, andy all over.
Speaker 4: The globe, so there's quite despite there's quite a lot
Speaker 4: which comes over from Poland and Ukraine and certainly from
Speaker 4: my dad when he started getting deliveries back in the nineties.
Speaker 4: I think that was where it was coming from. Was
Speaker 4: that once the island Iron Cerson came down and opened
Speaker 4: up like Eastern Europe, that's it's just going to became
Speaker 4: a watch So Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Turkey and ridiculously as
Speaker 4: far away as China where it has to be driven
Speaker 4: a thousand miles from the reedbeds to the port and
Speaker 4: then shipped over, which is well. I think one of
Speaker 4: the best things about thatch in regards to whether you're
Speaker 4: using straw come red read is it really it should
Speaker 4: be a carbon neutral roofing material because the materials obviously
Speaker 4: biody gradible. Pretty much everything which goes on can be recycled.
Speaker 4: But then you've had this huge carbon footprint onto it.
Speaker 4: It's bonkers.
Speaker 2: You've got to think of people are driving around the
Speaker 2: Bucolic English countryside looking at all these wonderful thatch roofs
Speaker 2: thinking oh, there we have an ancient local material doing
Speaker 2: it in the natural way. They don't realize that it's
Speaker 2: got more carbon in that process than shipping timber in
Speaker 2: from Canada or something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's not good. I know that the globe
Speaker 4: theater is it's down to be re thatched re thatch
Speaker 4: in the eighties, but for some reason there was a
Speaker 4: decision made to spray on this supposedly fire proof retardant
Speaker 4: material on it, which given the fact that well, any
Speaker 4: thatching material, the idea is that it automatically sheds moisture.
Speaker 4: So it's a bit of a waste of time anyhow,
Speaker 4: But it absolutely trashed the roof completely, and really you've
Speaker 4: got now what, thirty years out of a roof which
Speaker 4: would have lasted fifty sixty plus. And they have actually
Speaker 4: kind of put aside a bunch of Norfolk reed to
Speaker 4: re thatch this, which is really good that you're getting
Speaker 4: UK grown reed to kind of go back on such
Speaker 4: an iconic structure.
Speaker 1: So they will actually be doing it. So therefore the
Speaker 1: problem we have, by the sound of it, is the surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: we've got habitat loss, so we've got fifty loss of that,
Speaker 1: but there aren't the reed cut But am I correct
Speaker 1: in saying that? Also there are other hands at work
Speaker 1: who are almost trying to stop read from being cut
Speaker 1: because it is perceived now that this sort of management
Speaker 1: is somehow bad for nature and bad for wildlife.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So the most iconic bird which people kind of
Speaker 4: think about when it comes to reedbed is the bitten
Speaker 4: and bitten population up and down, up and down, right
Speaker 4: up until we get to nineteen ninety seven and you'd
Speaker 4: only got eleven booming males left. Now, a couple of
Speaker 4: years beforehand, you've got the UK bio Diversity Action Plan
Speaker 4: came out and you read this, and there's this one
Speaker 4: term which comes out constantly, which is called fabable management.
Speaker 4: But if you look at a bit of interpretation favorable management.
Speaker 4: Despite the fact, you know you've got march harriers, bearded tipps,
Speaker 4: et cetera, which all rely and like seven hundred or
Speaker 4: so species of invertebrate which are which rely on on
Speaker 4: reedbed for their habitat, the management is purely based on that,
Speaker 4: on kind of supporting the bitten and then from there
Speaker 4: the habitat kind of pans have kind of come out
Speaker 4: from a couple of case studies which were done in
Speaker 4: ninety six, and there've been a little bit of other
Speaker 4: research here and there where it's thrown out some quite
Speaker 4: these figures which people have kind of absolutely kind of
Speaker 4: hanging themselves out to dry and like this is it.
Speaker 4: So if you think back to the show a few
Speaker 4: years a couple of years back, which talked about oxy
Speaker 4: coostin use and when they kind of pushed that out
Speaker 4: in Americans and oh, this study said it's not addictive,
Speaker 4: and ever it was so limited it was bombers. This
Speaker 4: has been the case with reed bed. Basically that there's
Speaker 4: a couple of figures which have been banded around, which
Speaker 4: basically the first one is you can leave if you
Speaker 4: can cut up to thirty percent of it and it
Speaker 4: will be fine. And then the other one is that
Speaker 4: you need up to twenty hectare or twenty hectares upwards
Speaker 4: of reed bed for bittens to be successful. But then
Speaker 4: there's always a butt. Okay, we've now gone from what
Speaker 4: eleven booming males in ninety seven and we're we're around
Speaker 4: about two hundred and thirty four two hundred and forty
Speaker 4: something along those kind of lines that the last count.
Speaker 4: So clearly within the UK there's only about fifty large
Speaker 4: scale reed beds. There's only really been two which have
Speaker 4: been large scale, which have been created over the last
Speaker 4: couple of over the last ten to fifteen years. You've
Speaker 4: got one in Lake and he just down the road
Speaker 4: from you in Suffolk, one in Sandy which is just
Speaker 4: down from Saint Nits in Bedfordshire, and there hasn't really
Speaker 4: been much like kind of growth. But despite that, bitter
Speaker 4: numbers have gone through the roof. So you would question
Speaker 4: or do they actually need this this twenty hectares because
Speaker 4: if you think if that was the case, well would
Speaker 4: have stayed at a flat there would be no growth.
Speaker 2: No, no, how much was studying, how much was supposition
Speaker 2: and position they wanted to stay out.
Speaker 4: To be fair, I did email one of the one
Speaker 4: of the researchers who did some of this, and he said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: I said, you know what, there's some quite limited numbers
Speaker 4: here and basically said, you know, completely fair point. If
Speaker 4: you got things back to school, but a long time ago,
Speaker 4: if you're doing a science experience, you would typically have
Speaker 4: like a control thing and then you would do all
Speaker 4: your variables. Well there wasn't You didn't have the bitter
Speaker 4: population or the kind of the rebeds kind of being
Speaker 4: properly managed to have the range of variables. So the
Speaker 4: modeling was quite limited. And he did quite say, your
Speaker 4: hands up, it's very limited, and really what could do
Speaker 4: with happening now that we have Bitten's occupying Give me
Speaker 4: a second look at my We've now got had like
Speaker 4: a twenty twenty seven percent population increase and they've gone
Speaker 4: from seven sites to one hundred and three, of which
Speaker 4: only twenty three percent of the bitten population common like
Speaker 4: a triple s. I you think, really do we need
Speaker 4: all these protections? If you look at what some of
Speaker 4: the other research which has happened over in Holland, they said,
Speaker 4: oh you can. There's not really a huge amount of
Speaker 4: difference if you leave you up to fifteen percent just
Speaker 4: kind of leave around the edges. There does need to
Speaker 4: be some element of policing. I completely get that, and
Speaker 4: I don't I would never for one second say let's
Speaker 4: go crazy and cut down every single piece of reed,
Speaker 4: which we could, but I think there certainly could be
Speaker 4: a more happy medium.
Speaker 2: Struck with the cutting of the reeds. I'm thinking about
Speaker 2: coppice woodland and saying coppicing hazel so I know how
Speaker 2: to you've got one single hazel tree, I know how
Speaker 2: to take that and turn that into several and then
Speaker 2: how often I can come back to that and get
Speaker 2: the same crop again and again in some kind of
Speaker 2: predictable manner. Is it the same with reed beds? Is
Speaker 2: it that you cut here and then three years later,
Speaker 2: five years later, seven years later you can come back,
Speaker 2: or do you have to start against somewhere else?
Speaker 4: It really does depend on what your what you want
Speaker 4: to use it for is the so it depends. I
Speaker 4: appreciate that's a very very academic answer, but it really
Speaker 4: does depend no, so ideally for thatching, what you are
Speaker 4: after is something called single whale, so.
Speaker 2: Whale as in the fishish fish shaped.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, so that's the correct that is the correct term.
Speaker 4: But basically it's cut on an annual basis, and you
Speaker 4: can get double whale, which is cut every two years.
Speaker 4: Now the reason why that just typically won't They don't
Speaker 4: like double whale as much because the reader has been
Speaker 4: dead for longer, the stems aren't too strong, et cetera,
Speaker 4: So preferably you would clean it out. I mean, you
Speaker 4: do get like a variety of different management techniques depending
Speaker 4: on what you want to load of what you want
Speaker 4: to do with it. You can get management cuts which
Speaker 4: are every seven years. But if you want to bring
Speaker 4: a reed bed back into kind of commercial use, if
Speaker 4: it's been left to kind of do its own thing
Speaker 4: for five seven years or so, you'll need to go
Speaker 4: through it will be like a full clear out. You
Speaker 4: will probably have to do a shallow burn and burning
Speaker 4: it nepsepter technique, which will because what happens reeds grow
Speaker 4: pretty quickly come November, start to die. All the kind
Speaker 4: of litter drops down and it gets all clagged up
Speaker 4: and with the clag reeds will then kind of go up.
Speaker 4: They'll start growing up weird angles and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not straight, it's not good for what
Speaker 4: you want for that jing, so you kind of go in.
Speaker 4: You then burn it all out and then you can
Speaker 4: kind of start from scratch. But for the for those
Speaker 4: who are kind of more into the environmental stuff, I mean,
Speaker 4: they're talking like, you know, ten fifteen plus years, which
Speaker 4: is really not ideal because and does fly in the
Speaker 4: face of the management evidence because reed bed will naturally
Speaker 4: want to see to to car and scrubland. Okay, so
Speaker 4: I'll automatically start getting all these trees and stuff like
Speaker 4: that in there. You then are offering purchase for predating
Speaker 4: birds as well. And also as you get more and more,
Speaker 4: little will build up in the actual in the base
Speaker 4: of the bed itself, it will start to dry out.
Speaker 4: So if you leave it and leave it and leave
Speaker 4: it will just end up with this overgrown, dried out mess,
Speaker 4: which is not really much used to anybody.
Speaker 3: So hold the front page.
Speaker 1: You aren't going to rewhile the reed bed if you
Speaker 1: want to go and have it.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Now this is interesting because I spoke to the chap
Speaker 1: who cuts the reeds down at Hadisko Islands.
Speaker 2: You actually spoke to the fellow who cut the reed.
Speaker 1: I spoke to the fellow who cut the reed rather
Speaker 1: than the hay. Yeah, yes, that's a niche reference. It
Speaker 1: is a very niche reference, especially seeing as he is
Speaker 1: the one of the greatest Suffolk writers.
Speaker 3: God bless him.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I spoke to the guy who cuts the reeds
Speaker 1: at Hadisko Island and he was saying that basically it's
Speaker 1: almost it's a god forsaken job now because he's not
Speaker 1: allowed to burn the stubble anymore, and he's got some
Speaker 1: sort of fungus or or rot that's in the base
Speaker 1: of this thing. Because people say, oh, you've got to
Speaker 1: keep it for so long, and then when he cuts it,
Speaker 1: it's not very popular with the thatchers, because as you've
Speaker 1: already said, it's it's basically weakened. But secondly, he said
Speaker 1: that the regrowth is that if you almost stubble burn it,
Speaker 1: it clears out this fungusy type thing he was saying about,
Speaker 1: sort of almost like a rust, and he said, and
Speaker 1: then it will freshen it all up. But he's not
Speaker 1: allowed to do that. I mean is that right, is
Speaker 1: a sort of a stubble burning is part of read management.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think you can do deep burn as well.
Speaker 4: It's not just a shallow burn. You can go all
Speaker 4: the way through. And these are kind of approved techniques.
Speaker 4: I'm not quite coming out with stuff out of kind
Speaker 4: of back of a fag packet and said this this,
Speaker 4: and this has been kind of approved way back from
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety six by a book which is actually produced
Speaker 4: by the RSPB called Bringing read Beds to Life. So
Speaker 4: it is kind of I would say, when I've been
Speaker 4: doing my research, is part of my PhD, there is
Speaker 4: quite a you do get to find this kind of
Speaker 4: conflict of information where your people one personal say this
Speaker 4: and one personal say that. And you do have certain individuals,
Speaker 4: because of the position which they're in, one of authority,
Speaker 4: that they all just kind of make decisions which kind
Speaker 4: of completely flies the face of the policies which their
Speaker 4: own organizations promote. I mean, it is kind of well
Speaker 4: documented that commercial management of rebeds is not kind of
Speaker 4: polar opposite to what you're going to need to do
Speaker 4: to support the environment and the habitat and the bitters
Speaker 4: and all the rest of it. It's the case of
Speaker 4: sensibly doing it. But yeah, you're just unfortunately you've got
Speaker 4: some very very entrenched positions because of because obviously, yeah,
Speaker 4: you can understand where people we've lost so much REBD
Speaker 4: over the last fifty years. You can, I do kind
Speaker 4: of get where they're coming from, and they don't want
Speaker 4: kind of unfettered, unrestricted draining and clear it out again
Speaker 4: and turn it into purely for food.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a bit like it's a bit like risk management.
Speaker 2: If you're somebody whose whole job is I don't know,
Speaker 2: fire safety or something like that, or you know, shark attacks.
Speaker 2: If you're a architects specialists, you say, then the most
Speaker 2: important thing you should ever do is never go in
Speaker 2: the water, because you won't get attacked by sharks. Then
Speaker 2: if your whole thing is reducing the carbon release of
Speaker 2: one particular thing, then you're going to be hyper focused
Speaker 2: on that and not pragmatic management at a wider scale.
Speaker 2: And I always think this with radical conservation and things
Speaker 2: like you know, rewarding or just destroying an entire industry
Speaker 2: or destroying an entire practice is radical that you should
Speaker 2: if you're the one proposing the radical intervention or the
Speaker 2: radical solution. It should the onus should be on you
Speaker 2: to prove that that's going to work, not on the
Speaker 2: existing practice to prove that that, well, the existing practice
Speaker 2: already has data, the existing practice we already know. Do
Speaker 2: more of this, less of this, this tends to happen.
Speaker 2: We can do this instead, we can swap this technique
Speaker 2: out for that. You already have that to work with,
Speaker 2: whereas the radical just stop or just turn it over
Speaker 2: to something else. Is it's unfair that that should be
Speaker 2: given immediate priority rather than allowing the process to change itself.
Speaker 2: That was a really poorly explained thing, Richard.
Speaker 1: No, I think I tell what I'm going to put
Speaker 1: it into a different way. I have just done some
Speaker 1: science which will please Andy because he's now an academic,
Speaker 1: he's no longer a sapper.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I like this bit yet.
Speaker 3: Right, So we've.
Speaker 1: Done some science which is basically along the lines of
Speaker 1: what you're looking at. Is that we now know because
Speaker 1: well we yo calls have known for long, long while.
Speaker 1: The hedges that you lay is an important part of
Speaker 1: the rotational management of and the GWCT did some research
Speaker 1: which said, yes, definitely they are batting above their average.
Speaker 1: If you lay a hedge in rotator as part of
Speaker 1: the rotational management of it that they are batting above
Speaker 1: their average for biodiversity. Now Here in East Aglia, we
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of livestock, so therefore what we
Speaker 1: tend to do is that we go to the default setting,
Speaker 1: which is, oh, I'm going to go and make this
Speaker 1: quite pretty laid hedge, which is a Midland bullock style.
Speaker 1: So there's got lots of steaks, lots of binders, and
Speaker 1: there you go. Isn't that lovely? Everyone looks pretty, seven
Speaker 1: goes brilliant, It looks like you've done something, and the
Speaker 1: human brain goes it looks pretty and it looks attractive,
Speaker 1: so therefore it must be good.
Speaker 3: Right now. That's all and good.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, as Richard testify, is that our coppice woods
Speaker 1: are in a parlor state here, so therefore we haven't
Speaker 1: got a huge amount of easily accessible coppice steaks for
Speaker 1: very few coppiet binders. But also more importantly is the
Speaker 1: style of Midland bullock style. Hedgelaying is a Midland style
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to go and stop bullocks from
Speaker 1: moving from one field.
Speaker 3: To the other.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't need to hedge lay wheat on either side.
Speaker 1: I tell you what, blackgrass isn't going to stop, and
Speaker 1: that's the only thing that's going to go, and it's
Speaker 1: going to go back around not much More's no straying
Speaker 1: oil seed rape here, not on my watch. So therefore
Speaker 1: what we did at the Barkers, who are one of
Speaker 1: the wonderful farmers in our High Suffolk farm cluster. We've
Speaker 1: got a test field where we've done different styles of
Speaker 1: hedgerow management, and one of which we've just done is
Speaker 1: that we laid in steak and bind bound and we've
Speaker 1: also then next to it, done what we'd call a
Speaker 1: conservation style, which has got very few steaks in. It's
Speaker 1: just crooked in place. It's laid a lot lower. Esthetically,
Speaker 1: it's not half as pretty as what the Midland bullock
Speaker 1: style is, the middle and Bullock styles. I sort of thing,
Speaker 1: oh yes, I'm going to get three thousand likes on
Speaker 1: X with that one. If I go and show one
Speaker 1: of my conservation laid ones, there's about seventy three people go.
Speaker 1: I like that because then what they're looking at the
Speaker 1: rest of them, what have you done if you run
Speaker 1: a tractor over it or something.
Speaker 2: It looks like a linear brush pile.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: But what we're trying to actually say is that in
Speaker 1: this setting that the esthetics matter bugger all in my mind,
Speaker 1: and actually it's going to do achieve just the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So I guess what you were almost
Speaker 1: trying to say here, or what I'm putting to you, Andy,
Speaker 1: is that the management of.
Speaker 3: Reads so that we get a.
Speaker 1: Usable product from it, that it's also possible that this
Speaker 1: is a very good thing for conservation, a bit like
Speaker 1: laying a heedge in conservation style or coppasing a wood
Speaker 1: so that you are going to get rejuvenation of stools.
Speaker 1: Is that basically almost what you're trying to prove with
Speaker 1: your PhD.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, that is commercial management very much is and
Speaker 4: will promote when it's unsensibly. Okay, we'll promote wildlife absolutely
Speaker 4: because I said if you if you just leave it
Speaker 4: and leave it and leave it, you know you're going
Speaker 4: to lose the habitat. It is as simple as that.
Speaker 4: So I don't get why people think, oh, yeah, just
Speaker 4: leave it twenty years do conservation cuts? I think one
Speaker 4: of the issues which you get because where you've got
Speaker 4: the con stewardship grants. There's no real differentiation between the
Speaker 4: payments you can get. So there you going through and
Speaker 4: doing like a full kind of clear out cut, which
Speaker 4: you would need to bring a rebed back to kind
Speaker 4: of commercial managements. Takes a lot of work, it's hard going,
Speaker 4: but there's no differentiation between that and kind of cutting
Speaker 4: it properly for to be used for thatching, and the
Speaker 4: time and effort which goes into that. So you can
Speaker 4: kind of go in with your seegia, Mama, cut it
Speaker 4: all back, break it up, burn it, be done with it,
Speaker 4: don't put it for a microhabitat. There's no difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, what downside is there? So we're going to
Speaker 1: go in and we're going to go and manage it. Now,
Speaker 1: it would be true that when I manage a length
Speaker 1: of hedge, one of the things that I don't do
Speaker 1: is I don't lay every single hedge on the farm
Speaker 1: or indeed in that one field any one time, because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it. I don't want a denude habitat.
Speaker 1: So there must be a downside of cutting reed down.
Speaker 1: And I suppose the bitten is the thing because they
Speaker 1: like thick reeds. But I mean, is there a sort
Speaker 1: of an optimal amount. So let's say you've got ten
Speaker 1: hectares of reed bed and let's make it actually realistic
Speaker 1: five hectares of reed bed. What proportion would you say
Speaker 1: could should be cut so it is commercially viable, but
Speaker 1: also the fact that you're not denuding the whole landscape
Speaker 1: just so we've got lots of thatching store that your
Speaker 1: brother can go and turn into this witchcraft on top
Speaker 1: of roofs.
Speaker 4: So I would estimate that you could take up to
Speaker 4: fifty percent. And I would say it would depend on
Speaker 4: where you're cutting, because you do want to leave run
Speaker 4: the peripheries alone because that's where you're going to get
Speaker 4: that that's where you're going to get your bits and
Speaker 4: that's where they want to be. But so you can
Speaker 4: probably take around about fifty percent ish, Okay, that kind
Speaker 4: of Again, it's like, and you would understand it be
Speaker 4: in business minutes, you've got to look at kind of
Speaker 4: the reed cutter. Is it commercially viable to come and
Speaker 4: do so you're not going to get guys who are
Speaker 4: going to drive, you know, five hours to do like
Speaker 4: half hect air or whatever and get like five hundred bundles.
Speaker 4: It's got to be it's got to be sufficient that
Speaker 4: they're going to get that they're going to get the
Speaker 4: money's worth.
Speaker 2: Out of it.
Speaker 3: What's the process and for cutting reed beds.
Speaker 4: Well, timing is key. It's kind of the first thing.
Speaker 4: Water control is the biggiest. So typically you'll be looking
Speaker 4: at cutting any you can cut anywhere really from November,
Speaker 4: once the glitter's gone up until depending on the how
Speaker 4: warm winter is around about March April sort of time.
Speaker 4: And this is down to ground nesting birds. Okay, uh
Speaker 4: and then will the most reed cutters are not actually
Speaker 4: reed bed owners, they're contractors exactly the same is shoe.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: So'll be told right, I can come in and then
Speaker 4: it will depend on you. They do have a range
Speaker 4: of different equipment. You've got some really quite jazzy self
Speaker 4: propelled kind of on tracks, one which will kind of
Speaker 4: it will come along, open up, drive along, cut it,
Speaker 4: sling it in the back. It's absolutely fantastic. Or you've
Speaker 4: got these these gear cutters. Other brands are available.
Speaker 1: No, they might sponsor us. No, they might sponsor us.
Speaker 1: I don't care.
Speaker 3: I love to see cutters.
Speaker 4: They're brilliant, But basically i'd say the easiest way it
Speaker 4: looks like it looks like an old fashioned rotavates. You've
Speaker 4: got two handles, you've got a motor in front, and
Speaker 4: you've got the he'll go along and he'll cut it.
Speaker 4: They will have a not tire with it, and apparently
Speaker 4: that's kind of that is key because then you'll get
Speaker 4: your your bundles and then you go along your cut
Speaker 4: however much. You'll then go and stack your your bundles
Speaker 4: up and they need to be dry. Keeping them again,
Speaker 4: the water level is key. You do not want to
Speaker 4: be cutting it wet and dropping it into the wet.
Speaker 4: They do need to be kind of dry and having
Speaker 4: kind of opened up this way, We've had some important
Speaker 4: stuff and I've been working for dad on on leave
Speaker 4: and whatnot before I join the army. You get like
Speaker 4: a bale of reed turns up and it's been harvested
Speaker 4: when it's wet and you open up and oh god,
Speaker 4: it stinks and it's absolutely molded to how you can't
Speaker 4: use it. It's just going to rot. So yeah, and
Speaker 4: depending on kind of where you are, so up on
Speaker 4: the tay, which is the it's one of the biggest
Speaker 4: areas of REBD within the UK because it's tidal. They
Speaker 4: can only cut what they can take off in a day,
Speaker 4: because obviously you leave it there, it's just going to
Speaker 4: end up out in the halfway to the Pharaoh Islands
Speaker 4: pretty quickly, so which is not ideal. So yeah, and
Speaker 4: storage is also a bit of a problem because you
Speaker 4: do need to keep it dry. And again, if you're
Speaker 4: a rebed, if you're contractor, you don't necessarily have a
Speaker 4: huge amount like storage space, so you've got to find that.
Speaker 4: And you can imagine ten twenty thousand bundles of reed
Speaker 4: does take up quite a lot of space.
Speaker 2: You mentioned tidal that and not actually considered that because
Speaker 2: I know all about read all my life's been spent
Speaker 2: on the western half of the country, so it's it's
Speaker 2: soule tolerant. It will it will live in brackish water.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean I spend huge amounts of times
Speaker 1: during the World fowling season wedged in the reed beds
Speaker 1: around Hadisko Island, of which there are a massive sea
Speaker 1: and we have works parties where we cut rides through
Speaker 1: so you can get to the river frontage, which is
Speaker 1: tidal estuary, and it's quite a claustrophobic experience. My my
Speaker 1: family are all from Southwold and the hen reed beds
Speaker 1: and the raid and reed beds and all those places.
Speaker 1: They were all working reed beds up until relatively recently.
Speaker 1: So clearly reed beds as a working entity are a
Speaker 1: very long standing thing, aren't they handy?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, And you can obviously kind of look you
Speaker 4: look only despite what you get the lovely Roman mosaics
Speaker 4: and you think, oh it's very nice. It's all child
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. That's just a little snap shots.
Speaker 4: So the US read for thousands and thousands of years
Speaker 4: for for thatching. You can there's kind of ancient or
Speaker 4: ancient as in kind of Tudor level era law about
Speaker 4: how much you can cut and when you can cut.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not.
Speaker 4: Are from up in Lincolnshire, so yeah, it's really is
Speaker 4: kind of it's part of the culture. It's been a
Speaker 4: working environment for for a long time. And I think
Speaker 4: kind of one of the things that I want to
Speaker 4: kind of push is that when people think about sustainability,
Speaker 4: you know, if they think about kind of carbon footprints
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, and ultimately you've got three pillars
Speaker 4: of sustainability, and they don't think about the impact on
Speaker 4: the people and the social aspect of this, and what
Speaker 4: if we carry on kind of down the route which
Speaker 4: we are at the moment where you know, it's kind
Speaker 4: of just making life so difficult for our red cutters.
Speaker 4: We're going to lose them. I said, you're only got
Speaker 4: thirty five at the moment, and that figure is a
Speaker 4: couple of years. Oh so it could be a little
Speaker 4: bit less, it could be a little bit more, and
Speaker 4: it will go and we'll just lose past a key
Speaker 4: part of this our heritage.
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Speaker 2: If you have a small rural business and you would
Speaker 2: like to have your advert as I suppose you could
Speaker 2: call it read out on the Country Slide podcast, then
Speaker 2: emailers using the link that's in the show notes. I
Speaker 2: discovered this thing the other day is at Risk Skills Register.
Speaker 2: It's such a traditional heritage skills and crafts that are
Speaker 2: begraded on a website like a protected species almost like that,
Speaker 2: so it's endangered and extinct and red listed and so on.
Speaker 2: And I think reed cutting was on therecause I know
Speaker 2: highland thatching with heather thatching is on there as almost.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that is rare as tend state that there's
Speaker 4: not very many people who can do that.
Speaker 2: Now we've got It's not my field, it's the neighbors field,
Speaker 2: but I've got my eye on it. It's about ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen acres of fairly wet clay bottomed flat field.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to construct a reed bed and make
Speaker 2: it into a reed bed, and I had access to
Speaker 2: a huge excavator and unlimited resources could I do it?
Speaker 2: And how would I do it? And how long would
Speaker 2: it take before it was filled with bittens?
Speaker 4: So yeah, it can be done, and said they are
Speaker 4: doing it over I said that down in the project
Speaker 4: over in sandy Is that's been going on for quite
Speaker 4: some time. It really does. It does depend on what
Speaker 4: you want to do with it, because if you are
Speaker 4: looking at it to kind of bringing it into commercial use,
Speaker 4: you would kind of design it kind of ever societly differently,
Speaker 4: and water control is kind of is absolutely key. There
Speaker 4: are different ways of kind of introducing red. You can
Speaker 4: literally go through and little and go in literally plant
Speaker 4: or the rhine zones in as well. And then obviously
Speaker 4: it's just times the water supply is kind of it
Speaker 4: is a biggie because they do obviously being a wetland,
Speaker 4: they do need a lot of water. And this is
Speaker 4: when they've looked at doing this over in Norfolk. This
Speaker 4: is kind of a bit of a limiting factor because
Speaker 4: of randomly enough of supply of water. They'd love to
Speaker 4: put more, yeah that they'd they'd love to go have
Speaker 4: more reedbeds, but it's because and create them from scratch.
Speaker 3: Because they've drained it too well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's I mean, that's that that
Speaker 1: people could wax lyrical about the Broads and there's nothing
Speaker 1: that a noise anyone from Suffolk. More, when people called
Speaker 1: the Broads the Norfolk Broads, because that is to dismiss
Speaker 1: all the Suffolk bit of the Broads, you know, Bungie
Speaker 1: and Beccles and and that sort of way.
Speaker 2: I honestly didn't know you hadn't me.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, yes, that's why it's called the Broads.
Speaker 3: But people called the Norfolk Broads.
Speaker 1: And I think it's probably I'd blame visit England or
Speaker 1: something like that, is they wanted to give it. Well.
Speaker 1: One of the funny things about the Broads is that
Speaker 1: the largely the reason it actually arrived was by accident.
Speaker 1: It's just people were no, it's not natural. They were
Speaker 1: just digging bits and bobs out saying, well, there's some pete,
Speaker 1: or we're going to go and drain that bit there
Speaker 1: because that's quite handy.
Speaker 3: We're going to go and work that.
Speaker 1: And then these mirrors appeared and and you know, like
Speaker 1: so much of our landscape, it's not natural. Am I
Speaker 1: right in saying Andy that One of the amazing things
Speaker 1: about reeds, they're brilliant for filtering nasty stuff.
Speaker 4: Ye apps, Yeah, they are absolutely fantastic. So they've got
Speaker 4: they started off kind of looking at this about forty
Speaker 4: odd years back, where you've got a heathrow randomly enough
Speaker 4: where so where they de ice the planes. Obviously there's
Speaker 4: a lot of glycol that comes off of it, and
Speaker 4: the last thing you want is that then running off
Speaker 4: the off onto the apron and kind of filtering down
Speaker 4: into the aquafas so that it goes through and it
Speaker 4: does filter out and you can use it for sewage works.
Speaker 4: It's quite common for old mining sites as well. We'll
Speaker 4: get rid of heavy metals and stuff like that. Disappointingly enough, though,
Speaker 4: it's a fantastic medium for filtering out the nasties. But
Speaker 4: where it absorbs all the gunk, you can't use it.
Speaker 4: Nobody would be happy to put that on a roof
Speaker 4: because you don't know because obviously it's got all this
Speaker 4: stuff in there, and you just don't know how long
Speaker 4: it's gonna last. And ultimately, a thatcher is kind of
Speaker 4: judged by the quality of their work by its longevity,
Speaker 4: and it's too much of it, it's too much for gamble.
Speaker 2: I get you that stuff that's planted in mitigation sites
Speaker 2: and the new building sites and things. That's a different species,
Speaker 2: isn't it?
Speaker 4: No same species?
Speaker 1: Is it exactly the same fragi Mighties Australis. That's the one, eh,
Speaker 1: it is the same species. Yes, Latin I hate, but
Speaker 1: this is one of the few things I can remember
Speaker 1: is that Fragimities Australis is read. But I used to
Speaker 1: use in virtually every single wild fowling piece I ever
Speaker 1: wrote for the Shooting Times because I quite like this
Speaker 1: sort of fragi Mighties Australis. I thought it made me
Speaker 1: sound clever, so I just used it all the time.
Speaker 1: Is my backdrop of fragimities or ASTs. So sadly we
Speaker 1: can use it to filter nasty stuff Fragimities Australist, but
Speaker 1: we can't use it as thatching straw. So therefore we're
Speaker 1: almost gonna have to or a thatching material should I say,
Speaker 1: we can't, So you'd have to grow it specifically with
Speaker 1: that in mind that it's got to be for wildlife.
Speaker 3: But there is also an end of use that's yeah.
Speaker 4: Water quality is.
Speaker 3: It's key.
Speaker 4: You do not want the night rates okay in there,
Speaker 4: and that's to be fair that's exactly the same with
Speaker 4: their with straw. You do not want a bunch of
Speaker 4: nitrates in there because it will just start kind of.
Speaker 4: It's just yeah, it doesn't do it any good to
Speaker 4: put it moildly.
Speaker 2: Because one of the things happening in the valley here
Speaker 2: is someone is talking about setting up a farm cluster.
Speaker 2: But for natural flood management, yeah, because I have everything
Speaker 2: out here is either the bit the flood comes from
Speaker 2: or the bit where the flood sits. It's either all.
Speaker 2: And one of the things we were looking at was
Speaker 2: sort of reed beds and things like that, because it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily natural flood management, but it is. It's catchment
Speaker 2: for slurry r enough because you can't get everyone to
Speaker 2: join the cluster, but they are spreading slurry and they
Speaker 2: are doing it in one hundreds and thousands of gallons
Speaker 2: on huge, huge areas when there's nothing on the ground
Speaker 2: to take it up. So it's just washing straight back
Speaker 2: down into the water course. So if we can collect it,
Speaker 2: I don't get it to catch somewhere other than the
Speaker 2: base of a hedge. It's not gonna be great for
Speaker 2: it's not gonna be great for read bed for thatching,
Speaker 2: but no one's got a thatch roof around here.
Speaker 4: The plus side is that reed bed regardless kind of
Speaker 4: whether it's used for thatching or not, you will still
Speaker 4: get the benefit from the species which will.
Speaker 2: Choose to live there accidentally do some good.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so there will be some kind of Yeah,
Speaker 4: you can't use for thatching, but there will definitely be
Speaker 4: some form of benefit from it if they're not. Reason
Speaker 4: you're preventing all the nasties going into the hedges and
Speaker 4: stuff like that. It's another habitat which you're providing different species,
Speaker 4: just not for that you.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm interested in is you're saying
Speaker 1: there's thirty five reed cutters left.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm a bit of an evangelist as a hedge layer,
Speaker 1: and so not only do I go and use social
Speaker 1: media to show what we're doing, but I go off
Speaker 1: and I give talks to young farmers clubs, and I
Speaker 1: go and do things at the Suffolk Show and various
Speaker 1: shows around the place, sort of saying not so much
Speaker 1: look at the beauty of my craft, but more the
Speaker 1: fact that make hedgerows interesting to people, so therefore they
Speaker 1: might want to go and perhaps get involved because I think.
Speaker 3: We're told by the previous.
Speaker 1: Government and this government's adopted it, that there's going to
Speaker 1: be one hundred and forty five thousand miles of new
Speaker 1: hedgerow that are going to be planted in this country
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty, which is going to happen because as
Speaker 1: when we spoke with Harry Hoblin, who actually grows the plants,
Speaker 1: saying ain't going to happen. But also my worry is
Speaker 1: that we haven't got the infrastructure aid to plant them
Speaker 1: and then be going forward. We haven't got the individuals
Speaker 1: who are going to manage those hedgerows well, so therefore
Speaker 1: they actually maximize their potential. We are going to have
Speaker 1: lots of lines of lollipops clad in plastic, which will
Speaker 1: either wither and die or just be pretty crap because
Speaker 1: they'll just be like little lollipops. If we're going to
Speaker 1: get better and more rebeds about, we're going to need
Speaker 1: to dovetail that with more reed cutters. How do we
Speaker 1: go about doing it? Do you mean, what's a bit
Speaker 1: chicken in the egg? Who do we need first more
Speaker 1: rebeds or more reedcutters?
Speaker 4: A bit of both really, because having spoken as very
Speaker 4: knowledgeable guy called Richard Starling. I think he's now semi retired,
Speaker 4: but he's kind of the fonts of all knowledge when
Speaker 4: it comes to kind of training up recutters. So the
Speaker 4: obviously recutters. Typically it's like a one or two man band,
Speaker 4: so you know when you're not. It's like with any businessman.
Speaker 4: I can imagine when you're training somebody up as a
Speaker 4: hedge cutter, as a hedge layer, for example, when you're
Speaker 4: not laying hedge, obviously you're losing time and kind of capability.
Speaker 4: So ideally their kind of recommendation is that there are
Speaker 4: some grant. They have trained a few people up over
Speaker 4: the last ten or fifteen years, this guy called Paul
Speaker 4: ed Eldridge and Rowan or I can't remember his surname
Speaker 4: off the top of my head now, which is really annoying.
Speaker 4: But they were trained up for a grant and you'll
Speaker 4: kind of do like boat license because obviously you need
Speaker 4: your boat a boat to kind of get in and
Speaker 4: off the off the beds like chainsaw and that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff. And really they do need to come in
Speaker 4: as somebody who is self employed. But you need it's
Speaker 4: the chicken and egg. You need the training and you
Speaker 4: need somebody who is you could idea do with like
Speaker 4: a couple of years at least of working alongside and
Speaker 4: experienced cutter, so that most of the problems which you
Speaker 4: would then which would likely come across, particularly in like
Speaker 4: terms of mechanical issues where where you get you can
Speaker 4: deal with. But it's and then but it's very seasonal.
Speaker 4: So what do you do past April? When you when
Speaker 4: you when you can't cut and you can do that
Speaker 4: there is kind of like general REBD management and wetland
Speaker 4: management which you can do, uh, but obviously it's quite limited.
Speaker 4: I mean, but when I was was working with Dad,
Speaker 4: and this is going back quite a long long time now,
Speaker 4: but sedge was your traditional Richmond cereal and you'd be
Speaker 4: able to cut sedge in summer and you were cut
Speaker 4: reading winter. But now sedge is pretty rare. This is
Speaker 4: either there's not very many people use it. It's certainly
Speaker 4: not as commonly used now.
Speaker 1: Instead yes they.
Speaker 4: So again you've kind of lost this kind of opportunity
Speaker 4: where somebody you've got somebody could be doing something else
Speaker 4: to produce thatchy material over the summer period. So it's
Speaker 4: really kind of difficult, which is why you do get
Speaker 4: quite a few part time cutters as well.
Speaker 2: This is a bit like the coppering quandary because it's
Speaker 2: the same sort of thing. If you're harvesting a natural material,
Speaker 2: you've kind of got this this enforced period of dormancy
Speaker 2: for your work. When everything's growing. You're just sat there
Speaker 2: twiddling your thumbs waiting for stuff to grow again, which
Speaker 2: is absolutely fine when that was your winter work when
Speaker 2: you were a farm laborer and you were doing something
Speaker 2: else and then you were plowing, and then you were harvesting,
Speaker 2: and then you were back coppering or hedge laying or whatever.
Speaker 2: But this, that kind of seasonal work doesn't if you've
Speaker 2: now got to dedicate your own entire life to it,
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense on the spreadsheet, does it? Or
Speaker 2: in the bank?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, financially it's financially it's yeah, it's hard going.
Speaker 4: I mean, the price of reed did jump up significantly
Speaker 4: when Putin invaded Ukraine. It kind of went jumped up
Speaker 4: to about seven pounds of bundle. It has kind of
Speaker 4: calmed down a bit now, but it's still there wasn't
Speaker 4: really a huge amount of price gain for there over
Speaker 4: the previous twenty years or so, despite obviously inflation and
Speaker 4: everything like that. It's you don't see too many reed cutters,
Speaker 4: like cutting around in ferraris.
Speaker 3: No hedge layers. I mean, you've hit the nail on
Speaker 3: the head there, Richard.
Speaker 1: To be perfectly frank, is that one of the reasons
Speaker 1: we can't honestly take an apprentice or two we would
Speaker 1: need two apprentices to actually make it work, is because
Speaker 1: we start hedge laying in September and then we will
Speaker 1: finish on the last day of March. Because exactly the
Speaker 1: same reason as you've said, Andy, is the nesting birds.
Speaker 1: You know, with what is hardly much point us go
Speaker 1: and say, what wonderful conservationists. We are almost suddenly going
Speaker 1: and laying the thing that the yellow hammer's trying to
Speaker 1: nest it. So therefore, you know, we only have a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time that we can fit, you know,
Speaker 1: our work in. So it's difficult because I suppose because
Speaker 1: it's a seasonal apprenticeship. Apprenticeships don't work with seasonality, and
Speaker 1: I think so much of these co proper conservation jobs.
Speaker 1: You're doing a lot of the intensive stuff where you've
Speaker 1: got to go and learn a skill do the hard
Speaker 1: graft is a winter job because as Richard's correctly said
Speaker 1: that used to be done on the farm and it
Speaker 1: was the winter work which had been done. So, for example,
Speaker 1: back to the hades to go reed beds is the
Speaker 1: reed cutter there. He was the marshman, so he had
Speaker 1: his cattle grazing out on the grazing marshes, and so
Speaker 1: therefore he was moving them about, and then he went
Speaker 1: off and he was cutting reeds in the winter when
Speaker 1: he had bought his cattle in undercover, and that was
Speaker 1: his winter work. You can't build a modern apprenticeship around that.
Speaker 1: Have you got a solution that you're trying to almost
Speaker 1: think around that? Andy with you with your studies.
Speaker 4: It's not something I've looked at specifically. I do know
Speaker 4: it's kind of it is kind of a documented issue,
Speaker 4: and it's it's a real chicken and egg situation. We've
Speaker 4: got a well, we need the reed beds available to cut.
Speaker 4: At the same time, you know, it's getting people in
Speaker 4: to do it. I mean, it's hard work. I'm perhaps
Speaker 4: whether it's I'm a soft week. I went out a
Speaker 4: couple of years last year and I had a few
Speaker 4: hours with Paul and Row and I was watching what
Speaker 4: they were doing they're cutting a bed up near ludden
Speaker 4: and kind of get and it's hard going. I mean
Speaker 4: even behind one of the seas it's still kind of
Speaker 4: where you get the water. Deer well, they love trapesing
Speaker 4: through the reed beds. They trample everything down, so you're
Speaker 4: going to push that through. And then once you've cut
Speaker 4: the reed, an r foot broad bundle will typically be
Speaker 4: about two or three foot in diameter, and if it's
Speaker 4: slightly where it's heavy, you start lugging them around. It's
Speaker 4: hard going, it's not you know, it's a physically demanding job.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest challenges and pities I think is
Speaker 1: that I have got the thing somewhere I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to hand. But I think it's around British universities currently run.
Speaker 1: There are eighty eight different courses being run to produce ecologists,
Speaker 1: with something like eight thousand graduates coming out each year
Speaker 1: going for around eight hundred jobs. Now, these are all
Speaker 1: people who are clearly engaged with the natural world. They
Speaker 1: clearly love wildlife in different shapes of form. They've got
Speaker 1: specific loves and I think there are so few jobs though,
Speaker 1: like you say, as a reed cutter, you would be
Speaker 1: you know, you come from a line of what is
Speaker 1: it your fourth fifth generation Thatcher?
Speaker 4: Your yes, well now with my nephew it's five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so five generations of Thatchers. You decided to go
Speaker 1: and look at the raw material, you know, with a
Speaker 1: scientie an academics eye, and that knowledge though that you
Speaker 1: had because you have that core of being a practitioner
Speaker 1: first and then became an academic second, and also your
Speaker 1: rall engineers background made you understand how structures work. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really quite the golden ticket. And I often think
Speaker 1: about what a pity that so many of these young,
Speaker 1: very keen ecologists are coming out get thoroughly disillusioned. Half
Speaker 1: the time, they end up working for less than minimum
Speaker 1: wage because they end up working for a charity that
Speaker 1: they know that there's fifty applicants for every single role
Speaker 1: that comes up. Why aren't we encouraging them to be
Speaker 1: the next generation of reed cutters, the next generation of
Speaker 1: hedge layers, the next generation of coppices who were all
Speaker 1: missing these individuals, you know, because, like I say, the
Speaker 1: one thing everyone would like to have more reed beds. Well,
Speaker 1: you've just explained a bed is only going to be
Speaker 1: really punching above its weight for the environment, not only
Speaker 1: for wildlife, but also for carbon and all those things,
Speaker 1: because we haven't got to bring them on the slow
Speaker 1: boat to China. If we started to go and manage that,
Speaker 1: if we had more recutters coming from that ecologist mindset,
Speaker 1: it would be such a great thing. But it seems
Speaker 1: to be that we're just obsessed we've got to produce
Speaker 1: yet more academics, rather than we've got to produce more practitioners.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been an academic for how.
Speaker 4: Long now, Andy, just shy of eight years?
Speaker 1: Okay, So do you think that there is a slight
Speaker 1: problem in your new world that we're lacking people with
Speaker 1: monkey shovel hands like ours, because that seems to me, Yes,
Speaker 1: it seems to me. A problem, if you ask me,
Speaker 1: is that we've got lots of people, We've got lots
Speaker 1: of know how, but they haven't done the hard yards
Speaker 1: like you have before or they became academics. Do you
Speaker 1: share my embittered mindset?
Speaker 2: That was a manifesto?
Speaker 4: It's it's difficult because education is very much a public
Speaker 4: good and there's all kinds of research out there about
Speaker 4: kind of whid the benefits of going to university earning
Speaker 4: and all the rest of it. But the same time,
Speaker 4: I do recognize it in certain sectors. The grad market
Speaker 4: is flooded, and it's so I do look at people,
Speaker 4: like I said, you know, who are leaving with some
Speaker 4: really really fantastic qualifications and a lot of passion about
Speaker 4: there with their subject, but there's just not the roles
Speaker 4: there for them, and that's really really hard.
Speaker 2: I was talking to somebody up here the other week
Speaker 2: about something quite similar to this, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say who they are, but they're they're working in
Speaker 2: a university up here in North Wales and doing a
Speaker 2: similar sort of role. And their take was that if
Speaker 2: they can get hold of that student, they can get
Speaker 2: hold of that sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old and say, okay,
Speaker 2: these are the options as they see the market now,
Speaker 2: these are the options for work training, vocational training and
Speaker 2: so on. They can give that person more options. The
Speaker 2: problem sometimes comes that they're being asked. They're at sixth
Speaker 2: form or something like that, and they're asking a teacher
Speaker 2: what you should do for work, and a teacher says,
Speaker 2: we should go to university. And when you go to university,
Speaker 2: the only thing related to nature available to you is
Speaker 2: zoology or ecology basically, or countryside management, but then that
Speaker 2: tends to skew back towards other things. So there aren't
Speaker 2: many options there to be able to go off and
Speaker 2: do your thing. And unless you don't get to speak
Speaker 2: to somebody who actually knows about the vocational side of it,
Speaker 2: then you might just you might get stuck in that
Speaker 2: degree path and then it costs so much now as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I'm my oldest and he's about to do
Speaker 4: his A levels or finish his A levels this year,
Speaker 4: and he's a little bit uncertain as to what he
Speaker 4: wants to do. And I've said, you know, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to hound you and say go to university just
Speaker 4: for the sake of it, because it's it's so flipping expensive,
Speaker 4: and you do really if you're going to go to
Speaker 4: university now, I think you do really need to have
Speaker 4: an idea about where about kind of where you see
Speaker 4: yourself and kind of the you know, and how it's
Speaker 4: going to three years of university and how many thousand
Speaker 4: pounds that's going to cost thirty some things. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: and then plus you're living and all the rest of it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's where that's going to lead you for
Speaker 4: your career path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because because a you rise of becoming a senior
Speaker 2: acologist at a consultancy or something like that, you're still
Speaker 2: only earning in the high thirties low forties. I think
Speaker 2: at the moment, depending on where you are.
Speaker 3: You might as well be a hedge lager because even
Speaker 3: I can earn more than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, Yeah, I mean I think where you've
Speaker 4: got changes in legislation kind of requirements for biodiversity net
Speaker 4: gain with large developments, where you're looking at kind of
Speaker 4: the requirements around environmental impact to set what's going to
Speaker 4: come in from construction, I think potentially there is going
Speaker 4: to be more of a market out there. They just
Speaker 4: need I think potentially people do need to think I'm
Speaker 4: not just going to go work for like a Metland
Speaker 4: Trust whatever. Do you think I could go work for
Speaker 4: I'm not going to start dropping names, but I could
Speaker 4: go work for this organization? Is this organization and be
Speaker 4: in like an ecologist's role.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They don't necessarily understand that those opportunities are out there.
Speaker 3: Can I ask a question?
Speaker 1: Then, Andy, So you are going to be the one
Speaker 1: of the few, if not only doctor of reeds and
Speaker 1: I think you must get a card made up saying
Speaker 1: and superhero comics. Yes, doctor read right if you had,
Speaker 1: because when you become a doctor, you know, once you've
Speaker 1: you'd become doctor Dodson, you suddenly people go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's very important if you had a manifest though two Firstly,
Speaker 1: we need more reed beds, but secondly we need more
Speaker 1: working reed beds. And thirdly we need knowledgeable people who
Speaker 1: are going to manage them with both a mind that
Speaker 1: they're a working environment but they're also a home to wildlife.
Speaker 1: What's going to be your couple of takeaway points that
Speaker 1: we as a society in this country could do without
Speaker 1: it costing too much money. What can we do to
Speaker 1: actually achieve those three things? More working and people's look
Speaker 1: after them. What do you think we should do?
Speaker 4: The first thing, which is going to be absolutely critical
Speaker 4: is the data, and that will be an up to
Speaker 4: date analysis of reed beds as a habitat for protected
Speaker 4: species with a variety of different management patterns undertaken over
Speaker 4: a prolonged period, so five years or so, so we
Speaker 4: have a data set then rather than something which is
Speaker 4: done over a couple of years with a very limited
Speaker 4: data sex that's kind of where everything's based on there,
Speaker 4: and then from there we can then say, okay, we
Speaker 4: know that we can leave you know, thirty of the
Speaker 4: reedbed in this particular cutting pattern. Forming omesaic will still
Speaker 4: provide the habitat which we want for our wildlife to
Speaker 4: prosper to thrive. But at the same time that that
Speaker 4: is kind of that that would be my absolute number
Speaker 4: one priority. Get that data out there, and then once
Speaker 4: we've got the data out there, we can that that
Speaker 4: is then going to I think it's going to be
Speaker 4: an education piece on the part of for certain kind
Speaker 4: of sect Uh. It is frustrating because there are people
Speaker 4: within the RSPB, within the Wetland Trust who are really
Speaker 4: pro commercial management. There's done as a site just down
Speaker 4: the road well up from you outside on the way
Speaker 4: to Newmarket. It's tripless. I they want to turn it
Speaker 4: into back into commercial rebed management, which I think is
Speaker 4: absolutely amazing, and it needs that education piece, that dissemination
Speaker 4: that commercial cutting is not that the this absolute calamity
Speaker 4: which certain people would have us believe, so that the
Speaker 4: magic wand change in mindset, please okay and I and
Speaker 4: change the culture. But that how you I think that
Speaker 4: would what that would take again, would be several years
Speaker 4: of it being done in practice and for the figures
Speaker 4: to demonstrate Yeah you would. I would like to hope
Speaker 4: you would still will see that increase in bitter numbers.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, actually this can happen. And then I would
Speaker 4: also say, you know when I speak to like Rowan
Speaker 4: and Paul and guys like that, and they talk about
Speaker 4: their kind of experiences out on the marsh is cutting
Speaker 4: and again you know, seeing all the different wildlife kind
Speaker 4: of up close personal for the certain for like the
Speaker 4: ecologies who do find that really kind of interesting saying yeah,
Speaker 4: this is an opportunity where you can create an ideal
Speaker 4: habitat for them and going to get people.
Speaker 1: In Okay, I've got a means here of doing that
Speaker 1: because I get exactly what you're saying. And one of
Speaker 1: the things but in you know, the last decade I've
Speaker 1: been this evangelist is that we can have our cake
Speaker 1: and eat it is that you you know, we can
Speaker 1: manage hedgerows and we know that it does it better
Speaker 1: for them. And it's now getting to a point where
Speaker 1: even some of the absolute keyboard warriors who used to
Speaker 1: infest Twitter as it used to be called and that
Speaker 1: they're actually shut in their gobs. Now about that, you
Speaker 1: need to get the physical so that the data, I
Speaker 1: think is huge and important, but you almost need to
Speaker 1: get the what's it called the social buy in that
Speaker 1: something being managed is not necessarily a terrible thing. And
Speaker 1: Rewilding did a terrible disservice because it gave sucker to
Speaker 1: these people that you could if you just left it
Speaker 1: alone and ran away, that it was somehow going to
Speaker 1: be better. We've got a friend of ours, friend of
Speaker 1: the show called Tarquin Millington Drake who takes people up
Speaker 1: to Grousemor's and says, look, when you manage a more
Speaker 1: properly and you aren't tearing the ass out of it
Speaker 1: by trying to shoot ten gazillion brace every single year,
Speaker 1: but you're still managing it in a traditional way. Look
Speaker 1: at the wildlie. Come and look at it yourself. I
Speaker 1: think once you've got some of that data, then you
Speaker 1: need to talk to people like Richard and I who
Speaker 1: are in the media, and get some of those people
Speaker 1: and take them out into rebeds and say, look, they're here,
Speaker 1: this is being managed, and isn't it great. There's a
Speaker 1: tick in the box because we're not having to import
Speaker 1: this bloody stuff halfway round the world.
Speaker 3: But also.
Speaker 1: Isn't it wonderful because we've got all this wildlife here
Speaker 1: and it's providing employment for these people who are doing
Speaker 1: that a great traditional British skill. And so I think,
Speaker 1: once you've got your PhD, and once you've got some
Speaker 1: of that data that you're after, which I know you're
Speaker 1: on the case with, come back to us and we
Speaker 1: will try and do the same thing what Tarquin's doing
Speaker 1: up on the moors, which I understand nothing about is
Speaker 1: all too hilly, you know. And you and I are
Speaker 1: from down south in the east, and our ears go
Speaker 1: pop if we stand on a mole hill, and what
Speaker 1: we ought to do is the same thing here in
Speaker 1: the East Anglian reed beds or the reed beds, and
Speaker 1: go and say look there, you go find fault with
Speaker 1: this if you can.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I look at when I'm I grew
Speaker 4: up and came to Shoan now kind of living down
Speaker 4: in the southwest Edge, and I'll go down to say
Speaker 4: hengersprey Head, and I look at kind of the state
Speaker 4: of some of the reed beds down there, which is
Speaker 4: not looked after a bit of a mess really and
Speaker 4: I think, you know, you go down Like I was
Speaker 4: watching what pull and h and roalm we're doing. I
Speaker 4: was like, this could be that's really saying I drive
Speaker 4: past up and look at the opportunity, like this could
Speaker 4: be something really really good here where it kind of
Speaker 4: meets a UK kind of need for material, for homegrown material,
Speaker 4: whilst at the same time kind of providing, you know,
Speaker 4: allowing kind of wildlife to thrive. And that's kind of
Speaker 4: what I you know, yeah, appreciate you you understanding it
Speaker 4: can be both staid have cake eat it?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that is literally our challenge then, Richard,
Speaker 1: that we have done it. We have got that, We've
Speaker 1: got exactly what country Slide is all about. Is it's
Speaker 1: a working countryside that is providing employment for people and
Speaker 1: providing natural capital for wildlife.
Speaker 3: There we are, that's it done, mission statement, job done.
Speaker 4: Well what was that?
Speaker 2: What was that thing? That bush was standing on the
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier saying mission accomplished? Oh we need we aircraft
Speaker 2: carrier off the broads.
Speaker 3: Well you see.
Speaker 1: Well the problem is, of course, is that Andy and
Speaker 1: his former life was actually in the military. You were
Speaker 1: out in Iraq, weren't you.
Speaker 4: No, I dodged, I dodged Iraq, I did. I did
Speaker 4: two tours of Cossi by three in Afghanistan instead wide
Speaker 4: delights because you all the wetland up in the Chateau
Speaker 4: Arab and yeah, and you had all the drainage, which
Speaker 4: is done by Sadam the same post ninety one because
Speaker 4: in a similar manner to what Herold did and King
Speaker 4: Alfred could have hide him from the Normans and the
Speaker 4: Vikings kind of uh yeah, they went off into the
Speaker 4: inter marshals and kind of Adam was like, don't like this,
Speaker 4: can't access it, started draining it.
Speaker 1: Ah, there you go. So that's another reason not to
Speaker 1: like him, not just the fact that he was an
Speaker 1: absolute genocidal mania. Look at what he did to the
Speaker 1: bloody reed beds.
Speaker 2: The case against Adam is saying is just really mounting up,
Speaker 2: as you know what.
Speaker 1: Someone ought to do something about him any day now, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: don't worry. Probably tears on the case, I'm sure, yes,
Speaker 1: once he's first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is quite topical because you know, we traditionally
Speaker 4: we did get quite traditionally from the nineties, get a
Speaker 4: lot of read from Ukraine and then I'm not kind
Speaker 4: of an expert on kind of Ukrainian legislation and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. But when I've kind of looked at our
Speaker 4: government website and thought, I wonder if there's any kind
Speaker 4: of exclusions so similar to when we had conscription and
Speaker 4: then national service kind of post kind of World War
Speaker 4: two and whatnot, are there any kind of exemptions for
Speaker 4: kind of agricultural works and whatnot, And there's nothing as
Speaker 4: far as I'm aware. It's like, you know, if you
Speaker 4: are in the you know, the age bracket, you know
Speaker 4: you're you're serving. So then all of a sudden, the
Speaker 4: young people who could be recutters and now have it
Speaker 4: unfortunately having to deal with we're pooting. But apparently, according
Speaker 4: to a certain permanent maniac, they deserved it. And it's
Speaker 4: a bit to be invaded.
Speaker 2: Talking to a Polish mate about this, he was his
Speaker 2: cousin's Ukrainian and they were they were saying that there's
Speaker 2: going to be this loss of physical skill for so
Speaker 2: many things in agriculture in Ukraine, because when you look
Speaker 2: at the age group of people who've gone out to
Speaker 2: fight and who've died, the sort of what you've got
Speaker 2: now is the middle bit's been taken and you've got
Speaker 2: the old people who know how to do the things,
Speaker 2: but they aren't physically capable of doing that thing on
Speaker 2: the land anymore. Or people who are young who've got
Speaker 2: the land and they've inherited the machinery, they haven't got
Speaker 2: the lived experience of knowing what happens in this field
Speaker 2: and that harvest and so on.
Speaker 4: That's how my great grandad got into that. She was
Speaker 4: kind of post World War One. He joined up in
Speaker 4: nineteen fourteen, very fortunate survived, so passiondaw went over to
Speaker 4: Padoua in Italy, and he was in his twenties when
Speaker 4: he joined up, so he wasn't exactly a spring chicken
Speaker 4: like eighteen nineteen years old. When in nineteen eighteen and
Speaker 4: he'd kind of had enough of just being a farm
Speaker 4: labor and obvious where you've got so much loss of life.
Speaker 4: He managed to get himself a job as as a
Speaker 4: training statue, which I don't think normally somebody would have
Speaker 4: been willing to take on a guy and kind of
Speaker 4: at the mid to late twenties normally in that kind
Speaker 4: of role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a bizarre time.
Speaker 1: After that, I'll tell you a funny thing, right, because
Speaker 1: we ought to start thinking about wrapping this up. But
Speaker 1: this is about Ukrainian refugees. My son Charlie. He had
Speaker 1: a little friend called Gleb who came over.
Speaker 2: This type of duck, isn't it.
Speaker 3: That's a grebe.
Speaker 1: This is Gleb and him and his mum were refugees
Speaker 1: and they were up on the Belarusian border was where
Speaker 1: they came from. And they came to the UK and
Speaker 1: he was given a place free of charge by where
Speaker 1: my son was at prep school, and very very generous
Speaker 1: of him.
Speaker 3: And he was a lovely guy, Gleb.
Speaker 1: Do you think he suddenly come from this war zone
Speaker 1: and it's suddenly going to a school he got to
Speaker 1: play rugby and all he'd ever done was like played
Speaker 1: chess and done gymnastics, and.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden there's always people throwing himselves out.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was an amazing little fellow anyway, So
Speaker 1: he came to stay with us for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I took him and Charlie off to U to
Speaker 1: bimble round Flea barm and go and have a look at.
Speaker 2: The wildlife there.
Speaker 1: And I sort of had this tour that I always
Speaker 1: do to Charlie's mates, and so first of allays sort
Speaker 1: of drive around. We go and check the traps, so
Speaker 1: we see if we can find some dead rats, which
Speaker 1: kids always seemed to like all dead rats.
Speaker 3: And then we go to the squirrel traps, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, Charlie was, wow, look at that, and he's picking
Speaker 1: sort of rats and squirrels out of traps and going
Speaker 1: in this brilliant and Gleb's face was utterly ashen. And
Speaker 1: then I went to go and check on the sheep
Speaker 1: because we'd put some sheep into the rotation, which we're
Speaker 1: actually knocking down some of the the floristic margins. And
Speaker 1: rather than start getting all there's some sheep, he was
Speaker 1: chasing around after and trying to cuddle these things, and
Speaker 1: the sheep were going can he buggle off please?
Speaker 3: And running around, and then you know, I explained to him.
Speaker 1: He had very good English, and I was explaining to himself,
Speaker 1: we're doing all this because we're trying to protect this
Speaker 1: really rare bird called the gray partridge, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're trying to get more numbers of them.
Speaker 3: And eventually we saw.
Speaker 1: A pair and I'm like, there they are, and he
Speaker 1: went they're rare, and I went, yes, I said, they've
Speaker 1: called the Gray Partry because I know Kip we're going
Speaker 1: with Kippen with everywhere her home. And I was going,
Speaker 1: oh god, because of course in the Ukraine, you know,
Speaker 1: they've got the great open spaces and there's great partries
Speaker 1: going over. So I thought, you know, I haven't really
Speaker 1: wowed this kid here.
Speaker 3: So what I them do is I went.
Speaker 1: Into the poulfrey in Hall, the butcher's in Debenham, and
Speaker 1: I said, right, what we'll do is I go and
Speaker 1: take him in there, and I'd go and a buy
Speaker 1: them one of these lovely sausage turnovers that Charlie absolutely loves.
Speaker 1: And then they take them into the back and they
Speaker 1: show them all the carcasses hanging up, and so I
Speaker 1: sort of what would you like to eat? Then, Gleb,
Speaker 1: and you're sort of going, I didn't want anything that
Speaker 1: was there. And then when Large Jamie, the other butcher
Speaker 1: in there, he went, so do you want to come
Speaker 1: and have a look at the carcasses? He went no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no like that, And so I rang Claire was we're
Speaker 1: coming back, and I said, do you know what I
Speaker 1: really think? Poor Gleb's being destroyed by war. I said nothing.
Speaker 1: He doesn't find any beauty in it, and I talked
Speaker 1: him through it. We saw this, We saw that the rats,
Speaker 1: the squirrels that no sausage turnover didn't want to come
Speaker 1: and say that you've forgotten, haven't you what?
Speaker 3: Because he's a vegetarian?
Speaker 1: Oh dear, okay, that might be the reason why then,
Speaker 1: So basically the poor kid has been dragged all over here.
Speaker 1: You know you've traumatized him, yes, traumatized him there by
Speaker 1: making him eat meat. Anyway, listen, Andy, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on, because.
Speaker 4: It was how was that?
Speaker 2: Why are we going to end there?
Speaker 1: Because this look we we have been for once and
Speaker 1: I think it's because Callum's not here, because look, I
Speaker 1: could have asked you the question what is that Callum's questions,
Speaker 1: Andy is he wanted to say a first of all,
Speaker 1: did you think that invade that going out and rescuing
Speaker 1: the good people of the Falkland Islands was a major
Speaker 1: importance in your success? And secondly, actually, yes, do you
Speaker 1: regret now the poll tax? And I went no, not
Speaker 1: that sort of thatcher, Callum, I know it was it
Speaker 1: was before ever, You're not even from Grantham, No, exactly
Speaker 1: it's not.
Speaker 2: We's not that far from Grantham, but actually that's important.
Speaker 1: But no, do you know what I thought is that
Speaker 1: we have been very good because it's just been Richard
Speaker 1: and I. We've actually listened to you because what you've
Speaker 1: said is fascinating and I've learned a lot.
Speaker 3: But it's also given us food for thought.
Speaker 1: Because I think that it's actually it's been very good
Speaker 1: because what we're talking confirmation bias is exactly what I
Speaker 1: believe is what you are a smousing and you're studying
Speaker 1: and hopefully soon you will be doctor Reid because you're saying, look,
Speaker 1: we can have our cake and eat it, and what
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing.
Speaker 3: And thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry I didn't really ask Callum's questions properly,
Speaker 1: but they were just silly anyway, and we knew it.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, I'll say I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed.
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1: We're all disappointed in him, you know, when it comes on.
Speaker 2: He was very tiring to go around the British Shooting
Speaker 2: Show with. I must be said. You know, you pulled
Speaker 2: back a string on a toy and it just keeps
Speaker 2: going That's what it was like. It was that, except
Speaker 2: he was then veering off towards the yetty stand and
Speaker 2: other things, and then he was going on about bill tong.
Speaker 2: You had this pocket full of billtong that it was
Speaker 2: just kept dipping into and it was gradually rehydrating as
Speaker 2: we went through the day with his bodily fluids. He
Speaker 2: kept offering it to people as well.
Speaker 1: You know, I made the pretense, you see, Andy, of
Speaker 1: not wanting to go to the shooting show, saying I've
Speaker 1: been there a lots of times. I don't want to
Speaker 1: look a load of guns. It's actually because I've spent
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time with Calum and I know
Speaker 1: that's all he'll be doing is rehydrating bloody South African
Speaker 1: drive eat it pocket and they're go getting excited about
Speaker 1: people who make bloody flasks. And so anyway, we'll be
Speaker 1: back next next week with the usual bollocks, without any
Speaker 1: any intelligent people to go and buffer the rest of
Speaker 1: our lunacy.
Speaker 3: But there we go. So sorry about that.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a
Speaker 4: real pleasure.
Speaker 3: No, it's great, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Right, have you got anything that you've got to say,
Speaker 1: with all the grown up stuff you know about how
Speaker 1: many people sort of want to listen to my voice
Speaker 1: for longer and pay us money.
Speaker 2: We've have our first patron. We have a patron, so
Speaker 2: they are supporting us now. And for the rest of you,
Speaker 2: why haven't you signed up? Because this is getting expensive
Speaker 2: and we've got to support Richard's port supply, which is
Speaker 2: at least seven hundred and fifty pounds a week exactly.
Speaker 2: But you know the fabulous appearance fees that our guests have.
Speaker 2: I think it was at least two grand for you,
Speaker 2: Andy to come on today. Just send us an invoice
Speaker 2: and Richard Niggas will sort it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, so we've done. We've got a load of new listeners. Again,
Speaker 2: we're doing quite well on that. We didn't seem to
Speaker 2: annoy anyone too much at the shooting show, apart from
Speaker 2: the ones we did annoy. We've got guests next week
Speaker 2: as well, next month rather.
Speaker 3: Oh we have yes, yes, what's that?
Speaker 2: What's that one?
Speaker 1: That one is quite interesting. It's International Women's Day, so
Speaker 1: therefore were the natural choice exactly. So, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed near women, as you probably are aware, Andy,
Speaker 1: is that my voice does things to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a legal statue, no, exactly.
Speaker 4: I'm still struggling to get over that last episode. Honestly,
Speaker 4: I felt so dirty.
Speaker 3: After listens well the dummarks.
Speaker 4: Oh god, almighty, yeah, I know, I.
Speaker 3: Know exactly it was.
Speaker 1: It was disgusting, wasn't it to me? I want to
Speaker 1: actually now discover what bittens get up to in all
Speaker 1: those reads. But yeah, So what we're doing is that
Speaker 1: for International Women's they we're actually binning Callum and I
Speaker 1: and we have got three fascinating women coming on. But
Speaker 1: also we've got Richard as well, because we've got to
Speaker 1: have someone to ask questions.
Speaker 2: So is that because I'm the least threatening of the
Speaker 2: lot of us, the most feminent.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's because my wife prefers your voice to mine.
Speaker 1: So she's one of the women you see who's on.
Speaker 1: She prefers your voice to mine because she gets to
Speaker 1: hear it, you know, ad nausea and poor thing. And
Speaker 1: we've also got Amy, so we've actually we're going to
Speaker 1: give Amy a voice. You know, this is like sort
Speaker 1: of it's a bit like the you know, the Suffragettes.
Speaker 1: Finally they've got the vote and.
Speaker 2: She's allowed out once a year, and then she'll throw
Speaker 2: herself under the King's horse exactly.
Speaker 1: And then we've also got the show director of the
Speaker 1: Hadley Show coming up, who is a proper, genuine lady.
Speaker 1: So we've got sort of various rural angles coming up
Speaker 1: for International Women's Day, and Richard has drawn the long
Speaker 1: straw or long read in getting to go and try
Speaker 1: and keep some sort of order and ask questions.
Speaker 3: So, yes, that's our march sorted.
Speaker 2: Out interactions wise. Somewhere in the middle of this, there
Speaker 2: was an insert for an advert. We've done a couple
Speaker 2: of these. Now these are the proper ones, not that
Speaker 2: weird stuff that happened at the end of one episode
Speaker 2: allegedly that some people sent in that wasn't us for
Speaker 2: legal reasons. And some people have been sending in their
Speaker 2: little sort of self read adverts for their or business.
Speaker 2: So we want to keep those going on every week.
Speaker 2: So if you've got one, send it in. So we're
Speaker 2: going to do one a week. So if we get
Speaker 2: a load, you'll have to wait.
Speaker 1: To tell your brother Andy that he can do one
Speaker 1: is amazing matching, Yes, yes.
Speaker 4: I will make sure he is aware of that. Condescend
Speaker 4: to speak to him.
Speaker 2: If you want to know how to send it in,
Speaker 2: then there's an email address in the show notes, or
Speaker 2: you can messages on Instagram, or message me or Richard
Speaker 2: or Amy somewhere on our different social media accounts. But
Speaker 2: just literally send a voice note on your phone in
Speaker 2: whatever app it is. That's all you need to do
Speaker 2: is say who you are, where you are, what you do,
Speaker 2: how people can get hold of you, and that's it.
Speaker 2: It's like a phone in radio show.
Speaker 1: If you can squeeze dunnucks in and their sex lives,
Speaker 1: we'll I'll have to squeeze dunucks well exactly, you know
Speaker 1: cloackle removal. Then, so I'm I would much well I.
Speaker 4: Get I can tell you about the Barbary part trade, shirt,
Speaker 4: sex life, and Gibraltar randomly enough because I had to
Speaker 4: limit the work I was doing up there because of
Speaker 4: the breeder season.
Speaker 1: Randomly enough really the barbary partridge.
Speaker 4: Yes, apparently they only like to get it on in
Speaker 4: the afternoon, so we are to down tools. That's about
Speaker 4: half twelve. As heaven forbid, some construction work would.
Speaker 3: Put the poor barbary partridge off his stroke.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really like that there alone time
Speaker 4: in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: They're basically French. Then the things you.
Speaker 4: Learned when you're in the army, Yes, exactly, amazing habit
Speaker 4: for the barbary partridge twenty years probably persist.
Speaker 3: One of those things you do remember. Yeah, yeah, excellent.
Speaker 2: Right, Well are we all done then, Richard, I think
Speaker 2: we're done. I think we can wind this one at
Speaker 2: excellent up even up. Yes, it's been a long day,
Speaker 2: I've been talking.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, thanks again, Andy and everyone.
Speaker 4: Bye bye bye. The table b