41: Live at FolkEast!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
So I am not the Richard Niggas, as it says
on the board over there. I'm just his friends that
came along to interview him. This is my good friend,
conservationist writer hedge Layer wants cavalryman Richard Nigus and proud
resident of Suffolk, possibly the finest county in England, or

(00:25):
so he says.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
So wheah, good afternoon, everybody, Thank you very much for coming.
We thought there'd actually be two people and we would
be fighting against Morris dancers and the jingling of bells,
which was reassuring to hear.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Now.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
The reason why I asked my pal Richard Prudo to
come all the way from North Wales, a five and
a half hour journey to get here, is because we
do with another pal of mine who's actually for message.
We don't hold that against him. We do a podcast

(01:02):
together called country Slide, a Smear of Country Love, and
the purpose for us starting that podcast was that we
felt that there is a.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Mistruths, misunderstandings, just playing old squid, as we say in Suffolk,
spoken and written about the work in Countryside and I,
as Richard tells you, I'm a professional hedgeler. He is
a professional outdoor guide forager. So actually, if you go

(01:44):
and get one of them chaps who says you can
eat that mushroom, he actually knows the ones you can
eat and the ones that send you to Mars. So
that's quite a handy old thing. And so we thought
one of the big things that's possibly lacking in the
countryside is a misunderstanding of how it works now and
how we manage it, how farming links up with nature conservation,

(02:06):
how our food gets onto our tables, and how that
can be done sustainably. And also some of the actions
that both he and I taken here as a coppicer
and me as a hedge layer, that some of the
things that we do, which are seen by some people
to be almost destructive, we wanted to highlight that actually

(02:27):
these are constructive, they're regenerative.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
And that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
But I thought rather than me just coming on here
and whiffling the way to you about Bill Hooks, I
thought it was better to get Richard to come along
and ask questions.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Because every single week we talk at.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
One another via the power of the Internet. I don't
think that'll ever catch on the Internet, but he's he's
sure he will ah, And we talk to one another
and people seem to like it. We are Britain's most
popular rural podcast, unbelieve ah. And so we thought, well,
the turbus have come along. And yes, of course it's
a lot of it's about my book words on the Head.

(03:07):
But also we thought that between the turb us will
carry on our mantra of what we do on Country
Slide is that we try to talk about, We try
to explain and.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
We don't preach to anybody. We just tell you about
our lived experiences. Say yeah, because if you go online
you can see that there's lots basically there's nothing but conflict.
And in terms of if you look at any conversation
about the countryside, it's no, you must do this, no
you must do that. No those people are bad, No,
those people are bad. But when you actually come and
speak to people in real life at events like this

(03:36):
or just literally out in the field br Uhs, those
extremes of conversation never really come about. Actually, real interaction
is a lot more amicable and lot more collaborative. So
we try and continue those conversations that we both have
out with people on the ground in whatever work we
do and try and bring it out in our contents,

(03:59):
but we do. So I think we should start that
off by talking about that their book. So can you
hold it up for the audience to see. So what's
It's called Words from.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
A hedge by Richard Nigus, and it's a hedge layer's
view of the countryside. I'm not saying, like so many
books written about nature and the countryside, that you've all
been doing it wrong. This is my mantra of how
it will get it right. That would be arrogant. And
the opening chapter in him is saying that anyone who

(04:32):
says they're an expert on hedgerows is a filthy lot.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
And that's my g jau cub.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
But no, there is a very important thing because I
am a proud Suffolk born and bred man, and I
think I know quite a lot about the hedgerows of
Suffolk because I've work and a.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Lot of them.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
I know quite a bit about hedgerows and Norfolk because
I have to go north of the Waveny to go
and try and sort of, you know, get them back
into line. And I occasionally will go over into Cambridgeshire
as well, just because we can show them what having
five fingers this long but high six you have to

(05:20):
get out of this tent to live Richard, so they
can't run that fast on account of their gills.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
But anyway, the the.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Thing that we wanted to achieve with writing this book
was to talk about that teu are a French word
which sadly we don't have a word for in English,
but the taint of the place that you understand it
that the soil, the climate, the way the wind blows,

(05:50):
and what that soil might do and what makes that
grow the wildlife species that are are present. And I
wanted to explain about what tewar is and what that
means to me as a hedge layer.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Is the fact that.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
I intimately know Suffolk hedges. But I'm going off to
Ireland in two weeks to go and headline something called
Hedgefest in Ireland.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
I know that's quite cool.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Problem means I'm gonna have to go over there and
speak to a load of Irish hedge layers and tell
them what to do. One I'm English, so that's not
necessarily going to solve a problem with Oliver Cromwell. But secondly,
I have no idea how a hedgerow grows in county
offerly where I'm off to, because even in Suffolk. One
of the things that I highlight in here is that

(06:37):
Suffolk's a big old county, but a hedgerow and new
Market on the chalk is a country mile away from
the Sandlings, just a few miles from here. But here
you are on the edge of the Suffolk. Boards and
hedges grow different here. I'm from mid Suffolk, and in
our high Suffolk clay you only got to sort of
show a maple to the soil and it's it's six

(07:00):
foot before you know it, because it's such strong soil.
But then if you go down to South Suffolk, they
grow differently again. So that whole idea that you are
an expert hedgelager is a nonsense.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
You aren't you.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
If you're any good, you know quite a lot about
your own little local tawa. I am therefore unashamedly parochial,
and that if you like. No one in all the
reviews that I've had of it have ever said he's
a right parochial bugger this by, But if they did,
I'd say thank you, because that's actually.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
A good thing.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
There aren't many venues where you have to speak up
over the sound of the morristances are they? So let's
roll this back a bits. Why why hedges and why
are hedges importance? Why our hedges important enough for you
to have had a career working with them.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
That's a good question. So the hedge listening? What is
a hedge? A hedge is a man made construct. Some
people say that they're the last remnants of the old.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Woods, the old old woods.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
I would wager that that is largely incorrect. We know
that the oldest hedgerow in Europe is English.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
We know that it was in.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Existence two thousand and five hundred BC near Peterborough. And
we know that because the wonderful archaeologist Francis Pryor.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
If you used to watch Time.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Team, he was the sensible one with the beard, who
understood the archaeology of their land. But he was a
finlander himself, and he dug around, and unlike so many
other archaeologists, he hasn't got old rock formations to give him,
and old footings from buildings and to show he's got pete.
But what he was able to find was in a

(08:47):
ditch just outside Peterborough, he saw a slight difference in
color when someone had cut a new ditch bisecting him.
He saw some darkened line there, and he dug down
into it and he found in there a small piece
of black and blackthorn brash. Now Francis Pryor is also

(09:08):
an amateur sheep producer, so he realized that that piece
of blackthorn brash had a little right angled hook on
the top, and that's how blackthorn grows when you've given
it a trim. And so he dug down more, thinking, gosh,
this is quite amazing. Stuff is Obviously he was a
hedge here, and it was obviously getting cut, and I
think it's quite old. And then he found more lines

(09:30):
of obviously it was hedgebrash. And then he found a
pleacher that had obviously had been cut and then desiccated
and died away.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
But he also found on one side.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Of this ditch where there'd been a hedge planted alongside
a handcuffed ditch.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, that's new.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
You know, someone's actually dug a ditch here. And over
here he found very high nutrient levels. And those high
nutrient levels can only mean one thing that there was
a density of livestock here he got that little old
piece of brash radiocarbon data two five hundred BC. It's
at a point when it was thought that we weren't

(10:07):
even farming. Actually we've got a laid hedge, we got
a handcuffed ditch, and we've got enough sheep on there.
So that is proper intensive farming. So when we look
at the hedge, and you ask me why it's important,
because the hedgerow is as old as we humans farming
in this country, and the hedge only stays as a

(10:31):
hedge with human intervention. You cannot rewild a hedge, Believe
you me, you cannot do it because it was planted
by human hand. And if it's going to not turn
into either a linear wood or a block of scrub,
it then has to be managed. And that management traditionally

(10:51):
was hedge laying or coppasing. We're into coppersing that I'm
trying to tell. But that intervention is another thing that
I think is also the most fascinating thing. Why being
a hedge layer is important to me because I know
the two five hundred years ago, if there was a hedge,

(11:12):
there must have.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Been a hedge layer.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
So I would argue that my craft has got hugely
ancient connotations to it, but I'm not doing it for
the craft I don't care about. Craft does not pay
my mortgage. Graft pays my mortgage. So what I had
to do was prove to the farmers in this neck

(11:36):
of the woods that my management technique of hedgerows as
beneficient to their farming. So I love the idea. It's
got all that history and heritage like we see around
us today we're at a folk festival. There is ancient
history and heritage. But then old boys out there who
are dancing at the moment, they're all wearing frocks and
painted their faces blue and stuff like that. They have modernized,

(11:58):
you know, ancient country dances, and it's a bit like
my pedglay. Really, it's got an ancient connotation, but it's
down got a very modern relevance.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
So you've got a mixture of history in there. You've
got historical land use, you've got a bit of archaeology.
I know that possibly the biggest part of all of
this for you is conservationally, So expanding my earlier question
out a bit, what is the what is the difference

(12:29):
between a row of trees? But something call a hedge
even though it's not managed anymore. And while the hedges
you were laying last season, what what is a conservation
benefit of you cutting and bending all of those trees
rather than just leaving them alone.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, well, I suppose you might think, okay, So here
we are an arable country. Yeah, we have a bit
of beef on the down by the river, but and
there's not whoge amount of livestocket, so we think, okay,
So what relevance as a hedge layer got in today's farm.
One of the large parts of my job is as

(13:05):
a conservationist, is improving biodiversity of a hedgerow. Now you
can have a big, tall, straggly line of trees, a
belt basically one that's grown out, and a turtle dove
will say that's a good hedge. I like that because
they like nesting up at the top there. But for
the vast majority of farmland species birds ones that are

(13:27):
sadly or too often under threat because of the various
agricultural practices that we had and sometimes still have, most
of the stuff of life starts at the base. So
therefore a hedge which is thick from bottom to top
is an ideal hedge and then incrementally cut and allowed to.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Get slightly bigger and slide. It's all and slowly bigger
and taller and wider.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Is a great one, but it's no good unless you
have actually managed to thicken up the base. And he's
thicking up the base of the hedge by either laying
it or coppassing it.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Compassing being the traditional method of managing hedgerows in.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Suffolk, but we use laying because it's basically like coppasing
on acid.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Basically you get more benefit and.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
You have less time in which the hedge has got
to go back.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
And I would also argue that a laid pleacher one
of the stems when it comes down, there's a picture
that you've got lateral growth going all the way along it.
If I cut it off just at the base, it'll
grow back, but you're only getting growth going out that way.
With a laid pleacher, you've got growth going that way,
and you've also got all the way along the lateral growth.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
When the little buds come up. Now I know, because
what we.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Do is when we look back at those laid pleachers
that in the bowl right down at the cup base,
that's where the yellowhammer physically wants to nest in that
little cup bowl. But I also know that the linnets
love it nesting along a laid pleacher, where then you're
starting to get upright shoots coming off that laid pleacher.

(15:00):
So we know that those two species, one red listed,
one amber listed, would rather nest in a laid hedge
than not. And we know that because we've got naturalists
to come and help us on the farm cluster that
are in this particular study that we did, and they
told us that there were more yellow hammer and linet
nests in hedges that were laid the ones which we'd
either coppist or left alone. So what's special about a

(15:25):
hedge over a line of trees or a hedge that's
just left to go to rack and ruin. We okay,
one there's left to go to rack and ruin that
eventually becomes desiccated and hollow in the bottom. So all
that is is a predator tunnel. So every single stoke, weasel,
fox and rat badger says, fantastic, this is a great place.

(15:45):
I can go and run along the middle here, and
I can go out and I can go and predate
on that great partridge nest. In other how superb is that?
And if it is just a tall old line of trees, well,
like I say, superb for a turtle.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Dove, possibly all right if you're a bullfin.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
But if you're one of the smaller the dunnocks, the
limits the yellow hammers, then it's not so good for
them because they haven't got that low basal density growsing.
So therefore that management of the hedge enables us to
go and have a wider biodiversity benefit. It also enables us,
if you like to go and offer more protection, because

(16:23):
if you're only that big, having a bare old hedge
to run around in the bottom of, you've got a
lot less chance to survival. And when you're that tiny,
life is pretty damn dangerous. So the more top cover
that you have, well, the better you are. So laid hedges,
say wildlife, that's.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Another sort of simultaneously a habitat and a place to live,
and they're a corridor that things can move along. So
does that give wildlife a space at the edge of
all these big arrable fields as well to move around
and get between those The woodland habitats will get to
the water and get to the other things that they need, because.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
They don't just just need a hedge, do they. No, No, no,
absolutely that.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
And one of the other things that we do in
our business is that we coppice woods.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Richard's a copper too over.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
In Wales, but my business partner he's got a coppering
business too, and so when we're improving small woodlands and
making them better, it works on the same principle is
that you rotationally coppice hazel, you get thicker basal density
of the wood and then you're going to have more
likely you're going to get woodlark, nightingale, cuckoo nesting in there.
They want that dense space in there. But if we

(17:29):
make a fantastic wood, or we renovate an old pond,
or we go and dig a.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
New one, that's we know. Obviously woods are great for nature.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Pond's central water is the stuff of life, but it
just becomes an oasis, an island. So the hedge has
this ability to be what I call the artery and
a landscape. It's a motorway along which wildlife can move
from one having a drink of water to that habitat

(17:59):
that they want living in a woodland setting, which is,
which is essential. But the other thing we've forgot, the
most important part of this. I say, in words from
the hedge available of the work ah, that a hedge
is only any good if it's good for a farmer.
Because a farmer, you know, he doesn't set out in
the morning and think, huh, what can I kill today?

(18:23):
It doesn't think that he doesn't go, I tell you what,
I really fancy burning some diesel. So I'm just going
to go and hitch my flyer up to a tractor
and I'm going to go and smash that up. They
don't think that, you know, to ignore what you might
read in certain newspapers or books and stuff about how
terrible farmers are. It doesn't make any cost effective sense.

(18:43):
But I'm also trying to make the hedge not just
work for a wild I've it's got to work for
the farm. And if you actually look at the other
benefit of when we go and have these linear ribbons
running across a field.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
When they grubbed all the hedges out, or.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
So many hedges out in nineteen forty six up to
a sort of nineteen eighty odd, they thought, well, were
maximizing yield area. But they the reason they stopped grubbing
hedges out because they realized there was huge soil erosion problems,
that the soil was getting desiccated because the retention and
the capillary action that a hedgerows roots has. Now we

(19:20):
also know when you're thinking so importantly about the water
quality and farmers are getting punished if they are polluting rivers. Well,
those roots network that the hedge has and they put
on more route if you lay or coppice them, because
that's the reaction that they have.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
They're not just putting more growth on on top of the.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Below, it's filtering out the night trates that we are
putting on the soil so that the water systems are uncleaner.
And then Anglian water they go and pay the farmer
money because the night trate level has dropped in the water,
which means, of course we've all got cheaper water bills. Well, okay,

(20:02):
thats you now, Well that hasn't happened here either, But
the principles are the same. But the farmer is getting
paid a small premium for having cleaner water, and that's
because it's got a grass margin and it's got an
improved hedgerow. So yeah, how wonderful is this thing the hedge?

Speaker 1 (20:21):
So in the book you we sort of break it
down chapter by chapter with conversations you seem to, particularly
the early chapters, you focus on one person or one
client or one farm that does stop in a particular way.
So those farmers that are paying you to manage their
hedges and write the management plan and lay the hedges,

(20:43):
are they paying for.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
It out of their their pockets? How is this being
paid for? How? All right? How was this being paid for?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, up until July the fourth last year, it was
being quite healthily paid for by all of you, sup
in this room, the tax payer via government grant. Because
when you're well, when the not all, I'll be honest,
there's huge amounts of the work that I do. Farmers
they will add whistles and bells to it from their

(21:13):
own pocket. If they've had a good year, they'll go,
we might as well do that. But if you can't
get me grund, let's go and do that. It makes
sense to go and add that to it. We'll put
that little tweak in here, Yes, we'll put that extra
a little lightne a cover crop in there next to
that gass margin, something like that.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
They'll quite happily do.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
But most of it was funded either under country sized
stewardship or this new all fan fancy or singing all
dancing thing called ELMS, the Environmental Land Management Scheme, and
the idea of ELMS was public money for public good.
And that public good part of it was the fact
of all that the factors that we just talked about
why hedgerows are important through to you know, us planting

(21:55):
new woods, huge suedes.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Of environmental good was done. Now.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
One of the other reasons why we do our podcast,
and one of the reasons why I wrote this book
is that this is largely an overwhelmingly positive book. I
will tell you the bad, but I'd also say when
we do this, when we add this bus, this bus,
this plus this, we get nature recovery in these areas.
And that's why I focused on these individuals, because they're

(22:21):
did individual farmers or just individuals.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
I've got a chapter on now about Silent.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Jim, who's a deer stalker, because actually controlling deer is
usually important if you want to have increased biodiversity.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
But that's by the way, the.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
That those individuals they reflect that it is quite possible
to make significant positive changes. So your tax dollar was
actually being incredibly well spent. But one of the things
that we have found we have a very positive podcast,
we've got a very positive book. There are a number
of wildlife organizations who find it easier to paint the

(22:59):
bad and forget to tell you the good. And that's
an understandable business regime because if you tell everything, say, oh,
the curlew's dead, there's no curls. They're all dead. But
they could do we could get some back if you
gave us some money. You'll go, oh, parl curlews, I'm
going to go and donate you some cash. If I
went and told you that the largest single population of

(23:22):
curlew nesting in the southern England is in the Avon
Valley farm cluster or run by the Game Wildlife Conservation Trust,
and I can tell you how they've managed to go
from twenty five breeding pairs now to one hundred and fifty.
And they have done that through habitat improvement. They've done

(23:44):
that with some clever draining and some clever rewetting, and
they've done that through really heavy targeted predator control on
fox's carrying crows magpiles right if I said all those things,
and so we can get to that point. So things
are going well, we.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Don't need my money then, do you.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
So therefore you can understand as to why the doom
and gloom story that you so often hear about the
countryside nature's declined. Oh yes, that X number of species
of all dead. Right, we haven't got enough hedges. We
haven't got enough hedges, and we need we need to
pal to another forty seven thousand miles more hedges.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Otherwise everything is going to be dead.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's not true. It's buncom it's utter nonsense. Look after
what we have now and manage it well, and then
you can achieve nature recovery. I'm not saying everything's all
rosy in the garden, but what this book is supposed
to tell you is about positive stories. And the positive
stories are about the individuals who I work.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
For one thing, it would.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Be very easy if you just read this book in isolation,
you think what every farmer's what is sant?

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Every gamekeeper is a lovely chap?

Speaker 3 (24:55):
What course, that's not true.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
I am actually honest enough in there to say, well, also,
the wats all of the downsides and how we've ended
up here. But I'm fed up to the back teeth
with the narrative that every farmer's a git, that every
gamekeeper is a murderer, and anyone who starts a chainsaw
is somehow akin to pole pot. So I'm trying to
redet to address that balance. And so some of the

(25:19):
funding to help get this book done was from the
Suffolk Agricultural Association and the Felix Stornley Cobbold Trust to
farming charities. And this book is probably in the hands
of more farmers than anybody else because what they saw
it as was a template for well, look your mate

(25:40):
down the road did it, so you can too. And
so a lot of these characters are not only great
examples of farming conservationists, there are actually great examples that
other farmers.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Go.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Oh, ed Nesling is a top lad, he's no muggy,
knows how to farm. So therefore, if he's managed to
go and focus his attention on returning the gray partridge
to Winston and Debenham and around there, perhaps I could
do that next door to them.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
So it's supposed to be a positive news story. So
it seems like hedge laying has become a new beekeeping.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
It's sort of.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
The the activity that you get into because it's a
conservation related activity.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
But if you have a back garden you can do
it there as well.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
And it does seem like your book has come along
just exactly the right year for that. Do you do
you get requests.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
To do people's gardens?

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Do you get requests to do do Missus Miggins's bottom
of the edge patch?

Speaker 3 (26:36):
That kind of thing, Yeah, was called Miggans. I apologize.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
They're what we call sibby jobs, you know, because in
other words, we're sort of as a disuppose of reference
back to my army background where.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
I started live.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
And yes, we do do some, and to be perfectly honest,
I rather prefer working on far because you can work
then at scale landscape scale.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
You can go and we do a hedgero management plan
for a.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Farm or a cluster of farms, and we can link
all those farms together so they become one land mass.
They're a very handy way at the end of the
season of laying a hedge in someone's garden. You do
twenty meters or something like that, and you lay it
and you stake it perfectly, and you bind the top
with three beautiful binders and it looks just like the
ones on Clarkson's farm, which is always whenever I say

(27:31):
I on a hedge layer.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
They go well, like on Clarkson's farm, and you go, yeah,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Well, most of reality isn't like on clients as farm
because you don't need to have this beautiful craft. What
you need to do is lay the hedge accurately, crook
it in place, and that will do well.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Because you haven't got time.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
We're on a clock.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
We get paid by the meter, so therefore we need
to run, get over the top of it, do it
properly and then get home again.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
So yes, we do do si.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
But one of my other things I'm extremely keen on
I know that you're doing.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
This now in Wales, is that it is an activity
that people can do and we have too few hedge layers.
I said earlier that the government of the previous government
told us that we had to have planned forty seven
thousand miles of new hedging. To give you an idea,

(28:23):
one that's seventy two thousand kilometers one k one meter
of hedge you put six plants in under a definite grant.
Now my mats wasn't that hot when I was at school,
which is why I'm a hedge.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Lab But while you're in the army exactly.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
But I wasn't a household cavalry there, boy saying, at
least I had my look smart while I was thick.
So that's the main thing. Porfies our four legs. That's
all you need to know.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
But that's very true. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Anyway, the most important thing is that how are you
going to go and grow all these aren't you? We
aren't growing en off hedge whips in this country. To
facilitate that.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
We are then going to have to go and wrap
them all in plastic.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Because we've got far too many deer and in this
neck of the woods, the predominant species that are really
causing mayhem fallow and muntjack. Neither a witch are a
native species.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
We are non native species eating out the underneath the hedges,
so we have to guard them, but that is single
use plastic on the whole.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
We do have bi degradable.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Guards, but I've not really found any that are cost effective.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Work with you.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, Now, the cays, the canes, they're interesting, so we
don't hardly have a coppice industry here anymore.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
So how are you going to keep this.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Little old hedgewit up in its single use plastic guard?
Or we could use hazel if we had a rotational
coppice business industry in this country the world, but we don't,
so we import all that bamboo from China. Now why
are we planting forty seventh miles a new hedge? So
the government, oh, it's going to be great for the environment. Yes,

(30:04):
forty seven thousand miles a single use plastic and chain
and canes imported from China and the plants imported from
Holland because we don't grow enough here. So you see
where I'm slightly coming from here is that you'll see
in four years time there'll be a manifesto and doubtless
there will be lots of stuff about how we're.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Going to improve the environment.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
The election before last it was the tree plant In
election the Conservatives said we're gainst planned one billion trees.
Labour went shit. They put one billion dowg one point
four billion under Jeremy Corbyn. The Liberal Democrats went stuff
that three billion trees. We're going in three billion trees
and enough hedges that we could go to the moon

(30:46):
and back with them.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Well we don't grow enough.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
But more to the.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Point, there ain't many people like him and me, which
you probably think you thank God for that, but actually
doing the practical hard graft, actually doing the hard yards
of planting those hedges or planting those trees. And as
we've already said, you can't just leave a hedge to
be a hedge of planted that bye, You've got to
go and manage the damn thing all it stops being

(31:10):
a hedge.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
And a wood is only your decent wood if it's managed.
So we need more people.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
And that's another reason why I wrote Words from a
Hedge Available and back and we do Coach Slide podcast
is because we try and encourage other people to go
and do idiots like us and go and work with
our hands out in the hedges in the woods.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, there's the it's not it's all tree planting, but
there's this halfter care aspect as well that I mean,
we're in probably the driest year for the last fifty
years now, I reckon about the ind of September, that's
how it will have turned out. Certainly where we are
in Wales, we've got cracks in the fields that you
could lose a bird down where there's I don't think

(31:51):
i've seen green grass in the backfield for since May.
It's it's pretty bad. Trees we planted last winter are
not going to survive because they're just they're in shallow roos.
They're only about that far down. You go down with
a spade, you need it opened, put the tree whip
in and then close it up again. If that top

(32:12):
eighteen inches is dry, it's got no chance. It hasn't
got a chance to the roots to get down. When
I drove over here, went on the A fourteen and
is it near Cambridge? I go to that bit where
it looks like someone is farming tree guards but no
tree those trees.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
So what's the score with that? Oh, that's a duel
in Eastangliar's crime them.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
So there was a lot of the work that we're
getting told to do now is mitigation.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
So they build.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
We've got a new build housing thing and a next
door but one village to us, which, without any hint
of remorse or realizing just how repellent this is, there
is a building project called red Wings. Well, yes, red
Wings used to be out in that field it's now

(32:57):
bloody identicate houses. There are four bedrooms executive homes because
we need some more four bedroom executive homes because we
haven't got enough of them.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
These places always named there for what, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Like wings curlews or partridge meadow, all these places. But
the daft thing is is that we'll then have this
thing called bio diversity net game, or as we call it,
kicking the can down the road. So if you lose
a piece of habitat that's been there for I don't
know how many centuries. And they managed to get some

(33:29):
planning permission on him. One of the interesting things is
that farmers again getting real bad red or they grubbed
all the hedges out where yes they used to because
the government told them to.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
They didn't do it.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Remember, they're then to start.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
A tractorp and dynamite trees because I'll be a fun laugh.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
You know how much money am I going to make
out a dynamiting a tree? Nothing?

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Oh, I'll do it anyway, It's not what they do.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
They're farmers of business people. You don't do stuff for
no reason. Anyway.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
They can't grub hedges out on farms.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
You have to go.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Through quite a hefty round.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Of applications to explain as the white is essential to
your agricultural business, as to I remove a hedge. Now,
if you're building new houses in the meadows or the
larks or wherever red listed species they're destroying this time,
if you're a builder, you don't have to because you
have oh it's called.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Bar diversity net gain.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
So yes, that hedge might have been there for one
hundred and fifty years, but they're going to pay us
to go and plant a brand new hedge any old
place really earlier.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Just matched that up, that'll be right.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
But but rather than losing three hundred and.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Fifty meters of old hedge, will give you ten percent more.
So therefore you've got three hundred and eighty odd meters
of new hedge.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
But once it's planted, the building company is not responsible
for its care.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
It can just stay there in those guards whither and
die and no one goes back and says or all
what's happening. And that's what happened along the A four
t Now, to be fair, the previous government did go oders.
It's very embarrassed because there were a lot of dead trees.
Because remarkably the environmental company who got the contract to

(35:07):
plant those didn't know that if you just planted a
tree whip into crap top soil that came down from there,
and you just sort of covered it with a little
bit old shingly grass and then you put these trees
on this bank, so therefore it's desiccated into subsoil.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
All the dreamed bank.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah that they all died, you know, who would have
thunk it, But but.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
It was that for the year first year. I think
that's really great.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
They've mitigated against all this habitat loss by planting these
trees along there. And like you say, now, what they've
done is plant is a lovely array of single use plastic.
So I'm afraid one of the things that where we
struggle is that most of the time we are working

(35:54):
with a job where we're looking I do hetero management plans, right,
and they work on a ten year side. I really
should do them in twenty year cycles, because I'm looking
if I lay aheadge in year one out on need
probably laying again in year twenty one right by working
ten year cycles on the whole, just for management's sake. Now,

(36:16):
the problem is in that twenty year cycle. That is
five different governments, five different manifestos, five different empty promises
made by however, many parties, and nature conservation and farming
does not work in these tiny, little five year segments

(36:41):
of policy. We work at best on ten years most
of the time. If it's trees or hell, how many
years century century?

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, yeah, depends what you're growing. But yeah, there's not
It's like any experiment in forestry. If you want to
find out, all, let's see what grows well on that
bank over there, have to plant them, manage them, and
maybe your children will find out whether the experiment works.
It sits outside of the human cycle. Just there's a
point I'm going to come on to in the moment,
which is about the book. But are there any consultant

(37:12):
tocologists in the room.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
Good right now? About something mean? But I work with them.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I work with them a lot, and I've got a
couple of very good friends that are consultant to cologists.
There is this whole parallel industry related to habitats and
habitat loss of bi diversity, net gain and projects like that.
That is, you get these mitigation projects, but you also
get these prebuilding things where that make the construction projects

(37:45):
very expensive, so you've probably heard about the bats and
the newts for HS two and things like that.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
That's often a.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Smoke screen because those things are expensive to do and
it's over a large, very diverse landscape. But you might
have seen this thing where people net hedges. Put a
net over a hedge because in five years time you
might want to do houses there, but it's cheaper to
net the hedge in winter, so birds card nest in
there and remove that as a nesting habitat until you're

(38:13):
ready to build a house there. We've ended up with
for big construction projects. It's weird parallel conservation labeled economy
that doesn't actually help wildlife. What it does is helps
house builders helped companies stay within the law, which isn't

(38:34):
a bad thing on its own, it's just it's not
the same as conservation. So you see this when those
same ecologists, who are very trained and very dedicated people
go out to do surveys on land to assess it,
to say is this a good habitat? Is this a
habitat that is doing well for this particular species. The

(38:55):
problem is that they're doing that under construction site rules,
which means they have to wear all all the BPE,
all the things that work on a construction site, even
though the thing that is going to be constructed there
doesn't exist yet. So my friend once had to do
water bowl surveys next to a riverbank for a cable

(39:16):
route that was coming across. But because of his next
to water, she had to wear a dry suit and
flotation stuff. Fair enough, but because he was going to
be an electrical site one day, the risk assessment said
she had to wear flash gear. So fireproof clothing on
top of the drysuit.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Can I just say something on the netting of patures, Yes,
so in me which is well, so this is edgeles.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
For the new man.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
There's probably about one hundred meters legs. The pedge has
recently just become strict down to the ground.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
I was done last winter, and I'm.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
Sure it's because because of BNNG and being able to
reduce the quality of habitat. When success it is there
was no longer any hedge. Oh, it'll make a DMG
a lot easier. Have removed a lot of the ecological
impediments found intivation.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
It's easy to gain if you're starts in Fronzerra.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's that is one of the
that's a very interesting observation. I don't heard that is
that one of them.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
I write a lot about the good guys in here,
and they almost are the losers in a lot of
environmental policy, because they have got a lot of grape utches,
lots of linuts, there's a lot of yellow hammers, there's
a lot of red pole, There's all these various species.
Although actually, yeah, we've got less in that wind. They

(40:41):
we got them, yeah, yeah, combuntings, of course we want them. Yeah,
they were down in that field there. When actually the
farmers who have perhaps farmed right up to the hedge
bottom and have not been so environmenting sound when it
then comes to say, well, let's get what improved and
can you make If you start from zero, it's pretty

(41:03):
damn easy to get to a bit better if you're
actually already at twenty five. It's much harder for those
people to get up to fifty, whereas to get from
zero to twenty five is a lot simpler. And like
you say, is that sometimes there are some people and
this is why some of the relationships that I see
with some of the construction companies is that they're putting

(41:23):
habitat in Why are you putting that there that will
make any ecological or conservation sense in any shape or form. Well,
it's because you're actually just making a pig's ear look
slightly more like perse And that's really why. And unfortunately
these heroes and the heroes many of them are in here,

(41:47):
are actually they've done it happen with their conscience. They
know that they're actually going to be at the losing it.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
And so this was reviewed in the Times literally.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Supplement very favorably, I might add, which was a bit
of a shock to me. I didn't know I was
in the Times literally someone because I'll be honest, I'm
a hedge layer. I happen to write is a side.
But one of the things that she said she's an
unashamed pelemicist. So I've already told you I'm unashamedly parochio,
but also I'm unashamedly a telemicist. Not completely. I don't

(42:22):
sit or it's either my way of the highway, but
I think there are some pretty clear and obvious black
and hite issues, and I'm afraid that I don't think
any yellowhammer. I have large yellowhammer tattoo on my arm
because I like yellow hammers, yellowhammers and gray partries in
my thing when I do book number two or get

(42:42):
a gray partridge on mack side. I am of the
firm belief that no yellowhammer, if asked the question, would
ever say, do you know what we need? More politicians?
I do know if asked they would say, I quite

(43:03):
like a couple more fellows who do that nice thing
with the hedges where I like to lay. And I
think that is where we are missing with nature recovery,
is that we are doing form filling exercises. We're asking
ecologist to go and work for the poachers, not the gamekeepers.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
And I think that is a great worry. And I'll
tell you a funny old thing. I was out at Buxhel.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
I was coppersing some steaks and binders in there, and
I write about it here. And there they were doing
an ecological survey for nesting habitat for this great big
pipeline that they're bringing water from Lincolnshire down through Norfolk
and Suffolk and down to sort of South Suffolk. It's
a great big pipeline and they're doing the nesting habitat

(43:51):
survey and Goldie is my business partner, the ian I
this is a triple S I would So we were
allowed to take our trucks in there because we're the
dama the rides. And we had to sit there and
we waited and we waited, and we waited because we
thought we'd better have a cup of tea. And we
were waiting for the chapoo owns that would come down

(44:12):
and say which coop we could work with. And there's
no phone works there anyway, We're waiting on our thing,
and we say, what the buddy hell's that? And there
are these two visions in Orange walking towards us, and
they had great big builders hats on.

Speaker 5 (44:28):
Triple Excel orange sort of day glow, high vis vest
boots were still toe caps on Triple Xcel over trauses
in Orange.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
One of them had a laptop and the other one
had a pair of binoculars.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
But you always can smell I can spot us.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Sued because look at someone they carry their binoculars, somebody
who actually knows what they're looking at.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
They sit there, this one there.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
By the time, by the time many things flown off,
they've got hold on that's gone. Anyway, So these two
people were trembling along and Goldie's got is he has
Labradors because he's silly.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
I have Cocker Spaniels, far better dogs.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
But anyway, Goldie's old labs out there and lovely old
dog called Oz. And you know he's one of them dogs.
If you ever had a break in, right, he wouldn't.
Just good, Hello, my name is Oz. If you'd like
to know where he keeps his keys, they're just under here,
he would.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
He's anyway, these old things have come towards it and
oswa pladdy hell And I went home and Goldie just
went Mark's like his dog because he's a pro past
turn chat anyway. I mean he said, what you're doing?
And I'm sure every single ecologist always has this question,
asked him. And now we're doing bird nesting habitat survey. Okay,

(45:50):
have you seen much?

Speaker 2 (45:52):
And the and the girl started to saying, oh yes,
and the no, terrible, terrible. Now this is one of
the dual woodlands in Suffolk, these woods, and we thought, okay,
why what's the matter and he said, well, he said,
poor habitat.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Isn't it's a trifle aside? Would that's been managed in
the same way since it was probably first planted back
in about fifteen hundred and something. We know that's when
this was first set up as it would. But more
to the point, as he was talking, woodcock jugged over
the rye right and out there on out of the stubbles,

(46:30):
just like the overwinter stubbles outside Cake Cake there's a
covey of gray partridges. And he said, well, haven't you
said nah, it's not good habitat at all. And so
I got to think him, whereas they flopped off with
their massive boots and silly hats and all that stuff,
would it not be better though? If their reports said no,

(46:55):
it's terrible. Because if you go and report it that
it's bad, you report that there is no nature, you report.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
That everything's dead. It's not just we're talking about at
the start. That is a good way of raising money
for some charities. But it's a lot simpler thing for
government to go and say, well, yes, I've obviously putting.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
This water pipe through here, We're going to put these
pylons the whole way through Suffolk and destroy all that
farmland and habitat.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yes, we can put those turbines up there. Oh yes,
this would be superb because we're not killing anything because
everything's dead. And those people work for Angler Water. They
were contractors, subcontractors of subcontractors. But that is the problem
that we're facing. So when I'm laying my hedges, and
the reason why I put this was a hedge layer's
view of the countryside, I reckon I can lay on

(47:48):
average if we're staking a binding a hedge, we do
about forty two three meters a day if we're conservation
laying it, So therefore we're laying almost like a Devon
style a bit lower. Crooking it in place, we could
do up to about eighty but I reckon we work
probably do about seven eight meters and then stop for
a cup of tea out the flask. So it gives

(48:08):
the opportunity to lean and sit and watch, and I'd
probably do more leaning and sitting and watching. The most
people in the countryside, and most of the stuff with
my view of it is the fact that the farmers
ain't the enemies. The builders are just doing what they're told,
The ecologists are just doing what they're told.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
But there's a bunch of people who are sat in
Westminster who are quite happy to use our wildlife, our wildlife,
our natural our green and pleasant land.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
The reason why all these guys are out there dancing,
why there's a history of folk music, all our heritage
and history based in the land, in the tewa of
our land. They are more than happy to use all
that as collateral for going and ticking a few boxes.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
And my view of the countryside is that we needed
to start having politicians who have a semblance of understanding
of what idiots like him and me, who work with
our hands.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
For living in woods and in hedgerows what it actually means.
Come and join us for a bit and might learn
a lot more because even.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
As a as a a normal person unlike us wandering
through the countryside, it's quite difficult to see exactly what's
out there. Because if you just if you're going out
to a walk along the foot path or something like that,
you can see the plants, they don't run away. You
can see all the hawthorn berries and the rose hits
and everything overhanging in the head rows and are the
slowes earlier this year right so nams, So you can

(49:38):
see all that because that doesn't get scared and run
away and hide when you ride. But all those the
small vertebrates, all the scround nesting birds, all of the
small birds, they scurry away when you walk through, particularly
you got dogs with you, and if your dog's ten
meters fifty meters in front of you coursing through the headrow,

(49:58):
they hear when the dog arrives. So you won't see
anything when you get there. But if like when often
when we're skibing or wait or waiting for a lando
or a land agent, what is that the technical taunch.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yes, you sit.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
There watching the landscape. And if you sit there quietly,
even in chainsaw traiergers and things like that, you will
start to see stuff emerge and come back and just
sitting still and watching fifteen minutes at a minimum, watching
the landscape.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Not reading a book. But this one's all right, the camouflower.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Should you work us that Linnitz can't see you with soon,
but you will see more things. So you have to
stop and sit in a place to find out what's
actually there. You can't walk through and assess it that way.
And that's something that's missed in policy, but it's also
missed in just our own interpretation of what's.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
In a place. You have to get to know somewhere
to find out what's there.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
And weirdly enough, technology helps of this because now we
have relatively inexpensive thermal imaging cameras, so you can go
by even by the bird watching places, and they get
used for all sorts of purposes. But for basically the
price of a good neurals digital camera, you can get
a thermal imaging scope. That means you can sit and

(51:18):
look at a hedge and see all the stuff that's
hiding from me. And if you go out about eleven
o'clock at night into your natured depleted stubble fields and
just go and see how many badgers are on roaming around,
how many things are wandering around at night? Look them
into the headbro see how many things are nesting up
in there. There's a whole host of wildlife that you

(51:40):
never really see. But when you have to go and
look for it, and actually it is almost it's a
business decision to find it, you do notice a lot
more there. So you can't rely on the narrative of
someone saying, oh, no, there's nothing there.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
You have to you have to find out, well, how
would you look, where did you look? How long did
you look?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Are you financially incentivized and not buying things in those places.
Because this is the difference between what we see online
and what we experience at work. There are two very
different countrysides out.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
There, and I think that on the whole, I would
say that my view with it natural England.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Just release some data.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yes, the other day the one hundred and fifty different
species are increasing. Bizarrely, our current Secretary of State for
Dehra took the credit for it. So they go.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
It shows you what brilliant stuff labor's doing. And I
thought that's amazing. They came into power on July the fourth.
What do they do?

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Ah and hay pressed are all the great partridges? Why
we're going to go and breed more now? When that's bollocks?
Its actually they do to us too, and people like
us do just us? Just us, yeah, no one else,
just us now listen. But the other thing I wanted
to get across, because I'm conscious of the time is
ramping on, is that one of.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
The things that both.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
That are very key and Richard runs now is just
south something where he is trying to train young people
in Wales of how to manage hedo's better as parts
and parts of the understanding nature the countryside, food farming,
et cetera. And I am involved with something called the

(53:20):
Suffolk School's Farm Project, which has an event every single
year at Trinity Park. And because everyone has to do
that in these book things, I'm going to read you
just a little bit of my book because obviously Abby
will shut the curtains in a minute, because you can't
escape until you've passed through the gift shop. This is

(53:41):
like a wave audio book. Yeah, basically, now, this is
what you do at these knittere busus.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
What you do. It's what you do. You've been doing
instead of working.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
That's easier than staring at things. Right anyway, this this
is this is the chapter.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
It is about how you know, because it's all the
good winging about them old bloody boys they don't understand
our country ways. Well okay, well let's go and do
something about it. So we got this thing. I'll read
this to you. I wait under the spread fingers of
sweet chestnut. Its leaves cast their rippling pattern on the

(54:16):
sandy grown The branches overhead are sent bowing and waving
by intermittent puffs of chill late April breeze. I shuffle
my feet with impatience, kicking up grit and spiny chestnut husks.
Laid hedges, each only twenty meters in lengths around me
on three sides.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Like a letter you.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
The short length of hawthorn and hazel on my right
was laid this time last year. The binders, now dried
and cracked, remain twisted in place. New buds have erupted
along the laid pleacher from the heels spring upwards shoots
of precocious coppice growth. I think to myself, that's not
a bad job on such a poor old hedge. At
the nine o'clock I see the first group of children

(54:57):
make their way towards me. They remind me of a
little of foxhound puppies, all babbling and pushing and shoving
one another rough, but with no evil intent. Their teacher
claps her hands and the racket ends abruptly. She turns
and treats me to a smile of genuine pleasure. We
recognize one another, meeting on this day each year for

(55:17):
the past four The Suffolk Schools Farm and Country Fair
at Trinity Park is an institution well loved by teachers,
children and exhibitors alike. Over one hundred Suffolk primary schools
send their pupils to this event, organized and run by
the Suffolk Agricultural Association. Here they hear about food, farming
and the countryside from the mouths of farmers, deer stalkers, beekeepers,

(55:40):
naturalists and a solitary hedge lad. This is the first
stand of the day for the jolly teacher and her
class of eight and nine year olds. By two o'clock,
I know her smile will be well worn. Herding cats
is tiring, even for experienced hands like hers. Good morning everyone,
I do speak like that when I go to this event.
By I heard him, mam, good morning everyone, I say

(56:02):
to the upturned semicircle of faces.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
I could be on the BBC candy goodle. My name
is Richard and I'm a hedge layer.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Where are you from twelve voices, replying a jumbled, high
pitched charm. I only catch the last word school. I
turn to the teacher, who smiles again, and she says
wood breach. I wave at the hedge on my left.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
What's this?

Speaker 3 (56:25):
Then?

Speaker 1 (56:25):
I asked the children. Generally, eleven hands immediately shoot skywards,
one stays lowered. The twelfth child is distracted. He's watching
a gun dog training demonstration in the distance. Labradors jumping
and gates are understand me, more entertaining than hedges in pleachers.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
I point to a.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Little girl, her hair coiled in elaborate plaits for the answer.
I see she wears a replica rips which town FC shirt?
This is promotion year for the tractor boys again, ah,
and their fan base is widening.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Her blue wellies make you smile. The decaday to a
green FOG's holding brollies. She has them wedged on the
wrong feet a bush, she replies, And not quite, I
say trees, answers a little boy sporting an Ipswich Town tracksuit.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
No, not trees, knives, says another. He goes against the
grain hereabouts and wears a black beady hat with an
arsenal badge.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
No, not quite. The gundog fan turns around a hedge,
he states, matter of facting, I know his sweatshirt sports
a John Deere tractor in blazon lom niveuf yea cy infuse.
Punching my right fist into my left palm. My exuberance
spooks the audience, and the front row steps back half

(57:42):
astride they bump into the rank behind surprises This odd
tall man in overalls is so excited about a mundane,
leafy line of things that look like small trees. I persevere,
telling them why we have hedges on farms and how
we manage them, and what benefits they bring for wildlife,
and why they ensure we have healthy food on our plates.

(58:03):
I ask them what mammals they think live in a hedge.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Their replies are eclectic.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Some are obvious mice, rats, rabbits, snakes, other leaves meat, permused.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Cats, says one little girl at the back.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I have a cat called Rugby, she adds confidentially, as
if imparting scandalous gossip. One is a spiky little animal,
I add as a k foo, and John Deere finally
gives me the answer. I seek hedgehogs, he announces, yes.
I warm to my subject.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Even their name reveals their preferred home, doesn't it. And
why would a thick, dense hedge be better for hedgehogs?

Speaker 3 (58:42):
I ask?

Speaker 1 (58:43):
My audience pauses briefly, then, like Roman senators, all raise
their hands. They don't like the rain, says one boy
his zips which town baseball cap is too big for
his head het blackberries. Another little girl answers her clothes,
revealing allegiance to neither football club nor track to manufacturer.
She prefers Taylor swift. What if a cage provides protection

(59:07):
from being eaten? What might like to eat a hedgehog?

Speaker 3 (59:11):
I query?

Speaker 2 (59:12):
This draws the gang up short. It is apparent they
can't imagine anything wanting to crunch through all of those
sharp spines and anyway. In their gentle world of animal stories,
the hedgehogs are friends to all.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
They have yet to learn.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
The true nature is far removed from the thing they
read about in books. Real nature is a series of
terrifying episodes of eating or being eaten. I help the
kids to find the right answer to the hedgehog's bow.
It's black and white, I add, and the hands gull up.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Zebra skunk says another.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
No, No, not a skunk or a zebra.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
They don't even live in Britain.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
I'm begin to plea what else is black and white?

Speaker 3 (59:51):
And is a predator?

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Willing the right answer out of the class. Finally, the
smallest boy in the front row raises his hand half heartedly,
a motion that could be passed off as an adjustment
to his hair.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Is it a badger?

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
He quavers?

Speaker 6 (01:00:06):
Yes, I say, Badgers eat hedgehogs, and the thick of
the hedge, the more chance a hedgehog has of escape.
I realize my question and answer session wasn't as fascinating
for the children as it was enlightening for me. I
grabbed my planting spade and hawthorn whip.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Who wants me to help me plant a hedge and
give the hedgehogs a new home? I asked, and twelve
hands shoot up. I give the spade. The little boy
who knows what a badger is. In each tile takes
their turn at digging, planting, heeling, and guarding, leaving a
slightly crooked line of fledgling new hedge in their wake.
I think that's a job well done, is it, I say,

(01:00:44):
and they agree wholehearted with a cheer. They say goodbye
and wander off together, chattering and giggling. Their teacher turns
and smiles a thank you over her shoulder. Then, with
arms outstretched, she shepherd her charges in the direction of a.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Pig handling demonstration. The next class live and for my
green cave. Good morning everyone. My name is Richard not,
I'm a hedge layer.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Where are you from?

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
And so we're not now And isn't it a tragedy
that those kids from Woodbridge, hardly stay in Metropolis, don't
know what a badger is, but they're more likely to
know what a zebras are skunk that all these foreign species.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
So therefore, that's why I wrote the book, because I
wanted to go and try and help educate, and that
is why each week Richard Callum and I do the
Countryside Podcast, because what we're trying to do is go
and not force stuff down people's throats, but do a
little bit of education in a lighthearted way. Although we'll

(01:01:48):
be honest, if primary school kids did listen to the
country Slide podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Yeah, now, oh you're the lucky ones.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
That's the the ones we don't in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
That's I think, that's basically you're the only people who
don't listen at this podcast. They were very big in
sales career. Yes, sorry, we haven't got the data for
nord career, but we we sort of started it in
the middle of your winter hedgelaying and coppicing season last
year on November and we thought, well we'd try it
for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

(01:02:21):
And so we do this stuff and then Callum is
a he's a photographer. He's an urban eye photographer of it. It
loves wild food and looks covering and trying to get
his kids more into the outdoors. So we sort of
covers that heart of it. We we didn't really have
a plan when we started, still don't now, to be fair.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
No, it's more of a.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Sort of damage limitation now than a clan. But we
we found an audience we didn't expect. We found an
audience that somebody told we both we've boys got stories
very similar. Somebody is saying that when they're on their
own in the tractor, and if you drive a traped

(01:03:00):
around a fielder particularly it's a big field, you're there
for hours just going up and down. I'm like doing
whatever machinery it is. You're on your own. You are
very isolated, on your own in a landscape. You can't
see another human being. And they really like our podcast
because it's stupid, it's silly. It's like being in the
pub listening to three people bicker about stuff and be

(01:03:22):
very very silly, but occasionally say something sensible, but there's
more by accident.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Than by design. But they couldn't get access to the podcast.
One week.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
One person I was talking to and it said that
was that was crushing for them because they couldn't hear
our stupidity for what but that one thing you were doing,
It's like, oh, we can never stop. Now We've got
to keep going just for that one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
It's peculiar because I think, you know, this education thing
is also saying in the countryside it is quite an
isolated job. And unfortunately I work with Richard gouldmight my
business partner, and we work together and we usually have
a dog with this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
But you know, reural life these days is not like
it used to be. You know fifty sixty years good is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
That one man con virtually farm a thousand acres on
his top and so therefore it is an isolated profession.
So therefore the podcast was certainly something where we were
speaking to our own bubble. But also I know that
we're speaking slightly out with that bubble. When I went
to go and Oliver the hedges of the Duke of
Norfolk's placer Aaron Well actually peppery, and he'd look around
and he went after you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
Go, I do like that country slide thing you do
may and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
So that's the senior peer of the realm. He listens.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
But also when we go to various places, we had
this joke but for ages, you know, when this book
was coming out, I was just shamelessly plugging it all
the time, and so Richard and Callum were just going to.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
Say, what book coming out?

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
I didn't know that, And that was just one of
the standing jokes, you know, was that I'd never talk
about my.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
Book, although that's obviously that's what I did do.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
I'd be walking through Morrison's in dis and I get
some old boy come up.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
You've got a book coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I like that, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
I knew that that's what it was, was that we
had suddenly struck a chord that you've got the Duke
of Norfolk and had a good old boy from Norfolk who
all find it quite fun.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
So anyway, I suppose we better ought.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
To go and wrap all this up because he's good
people who I've got to listen to some music too,
and a drink cider, which I think is the isn't
how the main reason for coming to a folk festival.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
I haven't seen any cider here, man.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
No, he's a good side of somewhere, is there that way?

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
People saying that way that he's been on the side
and that's what our his eyes.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
Are done, this wild flunking.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
At five pm, I thought, actually, do you know it's
an important thing we did.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
I bought duel flunking to a wider audience. But he
didn't think twelve flunking was a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
He just thought I'd invented a word, and I said,
and he, to his delight, he saw.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
That we got dwarlf flunking here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
It's a five and a half hour drive back to
North Wales. I think he's going to hang around if
it's like an anthropological exhibition expedition now, because we're seeing
these people on the other side of the country that
you ever see doing a strange thing. I know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
And he says, that comes from North Wales, my partners
of Lincolnshire. So yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
So so anyway, I don't think we has anyone gotten
burning questions they really want to say, because otherwise we
have to go lead them.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Yes, madam, are you have been south NORTHLK.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (01:06:25):
And the farmer had a grant put in yes and
you can see it stretching away in feears where I
poll go keep outside. Yes, they've taken the hedges are growing,
but they're full of plastic chees. Yes, who is going
to remove them? Because I don't see anyone anywhere around

(01:06:50):
my sword South Norfolk area removing these and we wear.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
About some typing off on you it's okay, yeah, well
they will do that. Part of the aren't is they
have to So therefore if they don't, they're in CONTRENTI
with the BN eleven grant under Countryside Stewardship, so it
has to be removed. But they are going to be
on for certainly on that slightly lighter clay that you

(01:07:14):
are there, they would certainly be on for four years.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Otherwise they're not going to have done their job. Yeah,
because are you seeing.

Speaker 7 (01:07:24):
I just think our whole country is admitted?

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Are they going quite brittle and cloudy? Yes? They're possibly
biodegradable ones which you can lead in place, but they
don't work very well, so they will break down. But
they might break down possibly not in my life, yeah,
thirty years. Yeah, but then that's a tick in a
box as well. Might they might be able to leave
them on for that per Who do you report it

(01:07:47):
to some one of your clients? Is it?

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
Bran?

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
I just think that claxing one of mine. Who would
you report them to? I? And you report him to anybody?

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
I think what you do is it might be an idea,
is that if just to shock him a bit, if
you go and see me all right, and you're BN eleven,
aren't they supposed to be off by now, and you'll
think you've work for the Rural Payments Agency or shit
himself and they'll be offering.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Them back to you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Do you can turn up wearing mustard cords and exactly
then I can loan you this jacket and you go
along and say hello, hugo yeah, and they'll go, ah,
you know, if.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
You're quite right, and I'm being flippant, oh yeah, it's
not your local, are no. I mean it's the same
thing with silas rap. It's the same thing with so
many single use plasters, and it's but you see that
why do we have to have them? Why do we
have to have them because we've got an over abundance
of non native deer. We wouldn't need to have those

(01:08:48):
tubes if it wasn't for the fact that we have
a non existent deer management policy in this country, and
we've got munk jack fallow. To a lesser degree, Chinese
watered it and in other parts of the country. Seeker
do jobs every single mouthful that a monk jack takes,
and hedgerows are their favorite, particularly Hawthorne. Everything on mouthful
that the monk jack takes was never by their right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
There's the take.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
There are non native species, so we don't need them here.
So until such time as we go and get our
dear problem under control, we're still going to have to
put single use plastic into the environment.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
And that's wrong. This was the question in the back
of the using different species.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Yes compared to ten years ago. No, No, but I
tell you what interestingly, the and we had him on
the podcast, actually guy called Harry Hoblin who runs by
Matrie Nurseries over near Thetford's here and Bridge. No, it's
there's just justin justin Suffolk.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
Actually on this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
The he is using seed provenance from south of the
door doing so. Therefore, although it will be and written
in the back of the book, I've got all the
species that I advocate for Suffolk hedges.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
That they work well in the various soils across and
are listed of those down. But the seed which he's
growing from from south of the door doin same species,
but they have evolved so that they are slightly slightly
more drought tolerant. The other thing because of the change

(01:10:30):
in climate is we are trying to plant plugs rather
than bear root because that extra bit of ready root
growth is a is an extra little bonus. But no,
I'm not wouldn't change the species Suffolk hedges a suffolk hedge,
but it's where the seed is sourced.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
From originally that is changing the suffout In North Wales.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
We are changing slightly so we can grow sweet chestnut
now that we couldn't ten years ago, fifteen years ago,
but sweet chest and we've now a viable species just
because of that slightly.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
Longer growing season. But slightly you've changed climate. Yes, question
here it's absolute.

Speaker 8 (01:11:12):
The educating children young pupil at the present gun to
understand it. What to expand vocational training for the other street.
Is there any representation to government apprenticeships or other top
training for your professionals.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
It's impossible to have an apprenticeship. Really, we're being hedge
layer because mine is the season. Occupation starts in first
September and the season then finishes on the last.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
Day of April.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
So what tends to happen is that an apprentice, quite
understand is going to say what the hell am I
going to do?

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Or something I want to be paid.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
I've been taken on by this, so that they're insufficiently
flexible to work for these rather niche tasks like hours. Also,
there is no in Suffolk, none of the one and
only agricultural college that we have hasn't got set up
an apprentice ship which they could then go back on

(01:12:12):
their day release, So they would have to go back
onto college and they would either do fencing or they
would do tree felling, which neither of which are anything
to do with with hedge lay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
The only successful apprenticeship i've seen that was funded by
the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and they
funded a hedge laying apprenticeship with a chat who's got
hedgelaying businesses sort of over towards safrom Walden down that way, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
He's got quite a few guys out working for him
and that worked quite well. But it's obviously unsustainable that
you would have to go and rely upon charities to
go and provide that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
So no short answer.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
In England, to my knowledge, there is no really meaningful surendy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Most of them argue the colleges do something within a
state management three hours of education and of course, yeah,
spartial college I think is the only one that does
maybe as part of a gamekeeping of courses. Which is
the last college that does gamekeeping with any serious degree?

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
This lady here, Oh yeah, there's.

Speaker 9 (01:13:12):
Lots of great stuff about kind of farms and everything
doing and d. You're probably speaking to a converted audience already.
But if there was anything that you could get the
public passes to lobbying the government to actually change I
know it's impossible, but one thing that would actually make

(01:13:35):
a huge difference to this whole issue. What kind of
area would that be in?

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Don't mean to go for us, you've got a better
you'll have a better answer.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
My would be is that farmers conservationists need consistency. So
therefore there's two reasons why.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
We don't we have inconsistency.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
One is because nature is sometimes used as a political
porn a tool because you can go and draw on heartstrings.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
You know, one hand is going I'm not going to
let your house housing be held up because of.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
Newts and bats, I think was what our Prime minister said,
or Angela Reno one of those people anyway, so that
was a failure, so therefore to stop using nature as
a tool. But that's more of a sort of tone
rather than policy. But I think one of the most
important policies is that there should be a matrix of

(01:14:37):
how we study what's worked there is. They're very good
at giving us money for me to go and plant
a hedge, to copy the hedge layer hedge gap one
up to side one up, to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
Go and incrementally cut one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
But what there's no funding for is to pay for
the ecologists to go out and honestly go and say, okay,
this hedge was laid three years ago, what is the
abundance of species now compared when we first started. So
we don't know what is actually efficacious in government policy.
Now I can tell you what's efficacious actually with the

(01:15:11):
headeros and boundaries grant, until Labor came into power, was
most of the options in there. Because I wrote a
huge amount of the policy for the Hegeros and Boundaries grant.
Because Janet Hues who was the senior civil servant in Elms.
She has fed up me being rude.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
To her on Twitter, so she'd all right, gobshite go
and okay, you can't write the stuff that rid of you.
Boy she did, she said, I maneuvered you like a
chess piece over here. So she said, so it's your
fault of it all goes wrong. And I think one
of the things that we haven't because we haven't got a.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Value on a yellhammer or limit. There's not a financial
value on it. So therefore we need to see. Therefore
the value is that is all our taxpayers' money on
doing all this this environmental good. We need to see
if it's actually worked, is it giving value for money?
And I don't see anything in any government policy where
they say, let's see if this has worked. They just

(01:16:04):
take it away and they give it back, and they
take it away and give it back. So wildlife will
never go and improve our careers. Hang by dangling threads
a lot of the time, and you know species will
go and drop off the perch quite literally. And so
therefore I think one of the most sensible things is
to go and say right before we start planting bloody
forty seven thousand miles a new hedge or x billion

(01:16:25):
trees or absent. Let's see if what we're doing already
and we've been paying millions of tax players pounds out
on is it working, and let's have some honesty. I
don't want to hear from certain charities who are going
to say everything's good, now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
Give you your money.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
I don't want to hear from a bunch of people
who work for a water board who said, nothing to see.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Now it's all dead. We can built that's fine. Don't
want hear from them. I going I want to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Some ecologists who are straight bats who are actually working
on behalf of the farmer who has got to go
and put his next granting and say is it worth
my while applying for the next year, and then we
can go and tell the second true state for death
or if it works. I think farming data is something
that should be a policy and should be adopted or
should be well funded.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
Abu tiver one more, one more? Which was this lady?

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Here was last while I broke Thank you.

Speaker 10 (01:17:16):
We have lots of really good hedges where we live
in Cataterum, Yeah, but very few hedge bow trees yeah,
I've then obviously the worst than you're rich of all
being played gone. Can farmers get it grant to put hedge.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Row trees seven pound twenty five per tree planted every.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
One hundred meters. Personally, I hate trees and hedges. And
the reason being is because I said, I've got youther
hamm on that on gray partches going on there for
the expert, because those two hate them because that's where
predators perch. But I've just down Earsham, just down the
road from here, just finished their hedgerow management plan.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
Fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
I couldn't work out where there were so many fantastic
old oaks in the trees, and interestingly, underneath the hedges
were still doing it right despite the shade, and there weren't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
There were brews of great partridges there left, right and center.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
They've got a very very good gamekeeper there who's absolutely
nailed on his lovely old boy looks like a klobbieds
absolutely hell of a chat.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
But trees everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
And I said, oh, I can't work better.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
I've never seen so many massive oaks, but I could
tell they obviously weren't part of an old wood. But
you know what it was turned out it used to
be the largest stud in Britain for Hackney carriage horses.
So all them old London cabby horses were actually bred Earsham,
but they farmed them like cattle. And of course a

(01:18:41):
horse doesn't green lot too much sun or wind or
rain on its back. So those big old oaks they
left there intentionally for when it was a big old
hunting park in the sixteenth and fifteenth century. They'd left
those oaks there intentionally to be covered. So I have
to say, I'm coming round to the idea that actually
trees and hedges aren't that terrible because Earsham they clearly.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
Had a huge amount of game and a rare game
like gray partridge. They had lap wings out on.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
One field where they've got a nest brooded off, and
of course lap wings and curly don't really like trees.
Obviously Isham they didn't mind some coming around to it.
So yes, to answer your question, there is a grant
for it. And what I put in is crab app it.
And the reason I put crab apple inner hedge is

(01:19:34):
because you've got more fruit and if the tractor driver
with his flail does catch it, it's not the end
of the tree actually makes it better. And if I'm
going to plant trees and hedgerows, I plant.

Speaker 3 (01:19:46):
Them at the end as a little spinny.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
And so that's my own personal quirk. Doesn't mean it's right,
but it's that's.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
What I liked. Yeah, we do it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
We make a corner triangle, corner bit, a different habitat
within a When the hedge Goldie, my business partner, he.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
Said, trees belonging woods and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
He's so it'd have been a lot quicker, but I
know it would be nice to see him back.

Speaker 3 (01:20:08):
And there is a grant. Thank you so much, ed One.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
Shut the tact.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Thank you you, Splu Michid, thank you too much for
providing the book. Sorry I'm being nice to you. And
they're available over there. Thank you Abby.

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
I'll even sign them if you want.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
I'll sign them if you want. You were covered in
spiders right night, you know,

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