Hedge Your Best!

In our short film marking National Hedgerow Week 2024, hedge-conscious farmers explore the best ways to make their hedgerows work for the farm business, delivering value for wildlife AND the bottom line. They conclude there is now ‘no excuse’ for poor hedge management and that you would ‘be a fool not to’ take up the generous funding on offer that supports farmers undertaking more extensive management approaches.

[@SarahPalmer-tr4ju]

Most informative and well presented.

[@IanGould159]

Great video, well done all!

[@FWAGeast]

Thank you. We're glad you enjoyed it.

[@threeriversforge1997]

I love seeing the traditional hedgerows being brought back. I think one of the biggest issues, though, is that we seem to always miss the mark a bit. The talk about "grants" from the government seems to skip over the fact that we made tending the hedges so very expensive with a thousand rules, laws, policies, taxes and regulations. We talk about the cost of the hedge-laying, but never what drove up those costs in the first place. And instead of getting rid of those things that drove up the cost, we now want to give "grants" which is basically just refunding people for all that they've paid out over the years.
Secondly, I'd like to see more people talking about the human factor in this equation. Hedges are a very old tradition, but so are the wonderful things people used to make from the hedges. The bodgers once worked every year to thin and maintain the hedges, then took that wood and made wonderful products for the local market. Cups, bowls, trays, saucers, gates, hurdles, the list is nearly endless, really. Sadly, the bodgers dried up when the people turned their backs on the culture and tradition, opting instead for cheap chintz made in some factory. Today, the country has become so hostile to small businesses that it's literally cheaper to produce things on the other side of the world, ship them all the way across the face of the earth to a store near you, where you can buy them for a pittance. How does that make sense? How did that come to be?
As noted in the beginning of the video, policies in the 50's saw mile after mile of hedgerow destroyed because they thought they had a good idea. Only now that time has passed do they see that the idea wasn't so very good at all. And that makes you wonder how many other ideas that we're currently living under are also bad ideas that cause more harm than good. Everyone talks about the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, but never the million straws that came before. I hope more people start thinking along this line of thought.