The art of hedging

[Winston001]

This reminds me that I notice hedges are changing or disappearing from the rural landscape. Hedge cutters may disappear. Old mac hedges often get too big, way beyond cutting height, and the foliage can cause abortion in cows so dairy farmers knock them over. In their place eucalupts are planted - or nothing.

Anyway, we don't have boxthorn here (that I'm aware of) but there is still a bit of hawthorn - it grows as a weed in Central Otago unfortunately.

We do still have a few gorse hedges in Southland although they are rare enough that I notice them. Awful things really but the nostalgic part of me remembers trimming them and looking for rabbits underneath.

[ellipsis]

...i may be wrong but I think it was hawthorne that we sent out to take the berries from...sloe berries , for making sloe gin...if you managed to not cut or impale every exposed or unexposed bit of flesh including up your nose and in your ears , you were not getting enough sloes..

[Hitcher]

...i may be wrong but I think it was hawthorne that we sent out to take the berries from...sloe berries , for making sloe gin...if you managed to not cut or impale every exposed or unexposed bit of flesh including up your nose and in your ears , you were not getting enough sloes..

Sloe berries are from the Blackthorn. I haven't heard of these in New Zealand. It's a completely different plant to Hawthorn, although gin may still be able to be made from their berries.

[caseye]

Hmmmmmmm, GIN!, pricks and injury, seems a small price to pay for "GIN"

[martybabe]

, GIN!, pricks and injury,"

Sounds like a night out in my home town

[Nova.]

seen one today, was 1.5 stories high looked like something out of mad max, had a digger like boom on it with what looked like a planes propeller and towed his work vehicle behind.

[nadroj]

I was asked to weigh the blade & flails off one of the early hedgecutters to allow them to make strong enough mounts for the Puki Ariki museum display. If my memory serves me correctly the blade was around 160Kg! That's a lot of inertia and why substantial tree's didnt stay in it's wake for long.

[speights_bud]

From the Machinery Thread:

[Hitcher]

From the Machinery Thread

Brilliant! The memories come flooding back.

[ellipsis]

...my fucking hedge has grown back to where it was, plus some...

[GSF]

From the Machinery Thread:

Holy shit, does anyone else find that sound it makes when it's fully spooled up and spinning kinda terrifying?

[Nova.]

Holy shit, does anyone else find that sound it makes when it's fully spooled up and spinning kinda terrifying?

yes haha, i was trying to figure out what it was then it started...

[unstuck]

Holy shit, does anyone else find that sound it makes when it's fully spooled up and spinning kinda terrifying?

Imagine sitting in the cab.

[speights_bud]

Holy shit, does anyone else find that sound it makes when it's fully spooled up and spinning kinda terrifying?

Yeap, one of those feeling that come along once in a blue moon and nearly makes you poop your pants with excitement and anxiety??

[eliot-ness]

As a kid growing up on a Yorkshire Dales hill farm I spent many years layering Hawthorn hedges. In those days, mainly because of the very steep terrain, the slasher was the only practicable method. and as layering meant cutting branches half way through and bending back to form a solid hedge, it was a painful and exhausting experience. Those hedges had been in place for hundreds of years, many still are, but over the last fifty years and with a gentleman farmer now in residence, the farm has grown wild and much of what used to be dairy pasture is now overgrown with Hawthorn, pretty when it's in flower and a great haven for birds, but no longer viable farming land.
In contrast, the pic is of part of my hedge, one hundred meters of thirty years old macrocarpa trimmed five times a year, but gradually growing taller, now up to over two meters high. A great wind break from the northerly winds, but the task is getting more difficult as I get older, and I can't think of anyway of doing the same job by machine other than the hedge trimmer.