The Hedge Cutting Thread

[daveydiesel1]

We are the opposite here, more and more trimming annually for the benefit of a good hedge, costs are huge but there’s no one else out there doing it, there’s only a few of us and we are run off our feet

I wish it was like that round here. Id
f i had work for a hedge cutter everyday id never of started milking as i like that job. But the competition is hugh round here as is usual with all comtracting jobs and the rate is around 30 an hour

 

[Goweresque]

Bet you get allot of satisfaction seeing them neatly trimmed now after the mess they were in when you took over

I do! I know its silly but to me a neatly trimmed hedge somehow looks more 'right' than a tall leggy one. I thinks its my OCD coming out

 

[Lapwing]

The hedgelaying National Championships were yesterday in Oxfordshire, & the finished work looked really good. I know it is slow & expensive nowadays, but there is no doubt it really improves hedges as a habitat & shelter, as well as being great publicity for farming laying a few prominent visible bits.

The essence of hedgelaying is really to encourage new vigorous growth from the base of the plant; the living diagonal “wall of wood” is in effect the temporary structure whilst the new shoots grow. A tree shear & gapping up any spaces achieves pretty similar results after 5 years or so, is far cheaper, and if done in rotation can mitigate the immediate temporary habitat loss Issues.

Flails have their place, but eventually hedges need a “reset” to ground level to avoid becoming all top & gappy at the base. Sadly coppicing a hedge to rejuvenate it is too often vilified as “ grubbing it out” by well meaning but ignorant local armchair experts who panic at the sight of a 360 working alongside a hedge, and who then seldom comment on the same much improved hedge in subsequent years.

Hedges are one of the biggest public faces of farming in this country. If we want to improve our image in the face of the relentless ”blame industrial farming” pressure, perhaps it would help to be seen to take up some of the grants on offer to occasionally give tired old hedges a fresh lease of life, and maybe try getting the local school or village newsletter on side beforehand to see the transformation.

 

[Post Driver]

The hedgelaying National Championships were yesterday in Oxfordshire, & the finished work looked really good. I know it is slow & expensive nowadays, but there is no doubt it really improves hedges as a habitat & shelter, as well as being great publicity for farming laying a few prominent visible bits.

The essence of hedgelaying is really to encourage new vigorous growth from the base of the plant; the living diagonal “wall of wood” is in effect the temporary structure whilst the new shoots grow. A tree shear & gapping up any spaces achieves pretty similar results after 5 years or so, is far cheaper, and if done in rotation can mitigate the immediate temporary habitat loss Issues.

Flails have their place, but eventually hedges need a “reset” to ground level to avoid becoming all top & gappy at the base. Sadly coppicing a hedge to rejuvenate it is too often vilified as “ grubbing it out” by well meaning but ignorant local armchair experts who panic at the sight of a 360 working alongside a hedge, and who then seldom comment on the same much improved hedge in subsequent years.

Hedges are one of the biggest public faces of farming in this country. If we want to improve our image in the face of the relentless ”blame industrial farming” pressure, perhaps it would help to be seen to take up some of the grants on offer to occasionally give tired old hedges a fresh lease of life, and maybe try getting the local school or village newsletter on side beforehand to see the transformation.

It was well worth a visit to see all the regional variations. It didn't look like the easiest of material to work with.

The Cheshire style looks quite sparse with all the brash removed, but I wonder if this gives more growth points for the plant to rejuvenate from?

 

[Ali_Maxxum]

We are the opposite here, more and more trimming annually for the benefit of a good hedge, costs are huge but there’s no one else out there doing it, there’s only a few of us and we are run off our feet

See we have the opposite, I wrote down a list of people with trimmers and that do contract trimming one way or another within a 20-30min radius and I got to just over 30. Used to be a good few around here and that was it, now its every other man and his dog and a lot running round for absolutely nothing.

 

[Lofty1984]

See we have the opposite, I wrote down a list of people with trimmers and that do contract trimming one way or another within a 20-30min radius and I got to just over 30. Used to be a good few around here and that was it, now its every other man and his dog and a lot running round for absolutely nothing.

Same this way

 

[spanners and hammers]

cant find any round here

 

[Lofty1984]

cant find any round here

£50 hr I’ll take a bus man’s holiday to you

 

[Lapwing]

It was well worth a visit to see all the regional variations. It didn't look like the easiest of material to work with.

The Cheshire style looks quite sparse with all the brash removed, but I wonder if this gives more growth points for the plant to rejuvenate from?

It was actually a pretty good hedge to work on, my section anyway (SoE). We hosted the championship a few years ago, and although the Cheshire & Yorkshire styles were really thin initially, 3 years later everything is looking really thick & robust. We reckoned the South of England & Lancashire Westmorland styles were best for songbirds as they had real depth to them for protection from magpies etc from the start

 

[ARW]

See we have the opposite, I wrote down a list of people with trimmers and that do contract trimming one way or another within a 20-30min radius and I got to just over 30. Used to be a good few around here and that was it, now its every other man and his dog and a lot running round for absolutely nothing.

There will be 4 or 5 within half an hour of me that a pure hedgecutter men, a few others that do abit but only when it suits them, I’m youngest by a good 20 years, we are doing about 1700 hours a year and I can’t fit in anymore. We have got about 1400 done so far this year, only another 3-400 to do if all goes well, try and be done for Xmas and focus on fencing
We are about £50 with diesel and it’s a slim job without cash jobs and price jobs
If customers don’t like it then please buy your own!

 

[BrianV]

Its one of those swings and roundabouts things. Its costs me about £5k/yr in contracting charges to have my hedges trimmed, and thats not the whole farm each year, thats road sides every year and the rest every other year. If I left it to grow I'd save some of that each year. Not all because if I left the road sides I'd soon have the council on my back, so I'm going to have to pay for that regardless. But I could probably cut 75% off

But then after 10-15 years I'd have massively overgrown hedges, I'd have lost god knows how many acres to hedges spreading into the field, and then be faced with how to manage the out of control growth. And thats going to probably be as expensive as the annual flailing bill was.

Fifteen years ago when I took over my place from my father, the hedges were in a right state, having been largely left for 20 years prior to that, with just occasional side trimming to reduce the worst of the sideways spread. Its taken me over a decade of working each winter to get most of the hedges back under management. Thats a lot of hours on the excavator with a tree shear, a lot of chain sawing, a lot of hours on the telehandler pushing up and burning brushwood and generally tidying up to achieve it. Some of it is my time, some contractors (the chainsawing mainly), all of it my machinery. But I'd have put that annual cost at somewhere in the same ball park as my hedge flailing bill now.

So it seems to me that you could take a holiday from hedge cutting, save X thousands of pounds per year, only in 10-15 years time to have to spend the same amount of money per year sorting out the resultant mess. I guess that the savings in the here and now could make a difference if times are really hard. But the reality is you're just skimping on maintenance which will cost you eventually.

Very true, not only that but as the hedge grows & shades out the centre then the centre slowly dies & no longer remains stock proof, if you are a serious farmer letting them go is a very bad mistake.

 

[yoki]

But the competition is hugh round here as is usual with all comtracting jobs and the rate is around 30 an hour

Even be the odd strop when somebody has the audacity to trim a hedge in somebody else's 'territiory',

................allegedly!

 

[James]

I wish it was like that round here. Id
f i had work for a hedge cutter everyday id never of started milking as i like that job. But the competition is hugh round here as is usual with all comtracting jobs and the rate is around 30 an hour

I was more than that last year and was told by one customer that the guy that cuts his other farm was £20/hr. So I lost that . Must see if he'll give me that guys number and he can cut mine for 20

 

[daveydiesel1]

Even be the odd strop when somebody has the audacity to trim a hedge in somebody else's 'territiory',

................allegedly!

Yes they seem to think they own they work even though its the customers that own the work

 

[Post Driver]

It was actually a pretty good hedge to work on, my section anyway (SoE). We hosted the championship a few years ago, and although the Cheshire & Yorkshire styles were really thin initially, 3 years later everything is looking really thick & robust. We reckoned the South of England & Lancashire Westmorland styles were best for songbirds as they had real depth to them for protection from magpies etc from the start

Yes that makes sense with the depth of cover. It will be interesting to take a drive past in a year or 2 and see how it's all looking, unfortunately I dont think that is a public footpath.
I'm not a fan of the Yorkshire style with the post and rail....

 

[Lapwing]

Yes that makes sense with the depth of cover. It will be interesting to take a drive past in a year or 2 and see how it's all looking, unfortunately I dont think that is a public footpath.
I'm not a fan of the Yorkshire style with the post and rail....

We banished Yorkshire style to a far corner too; seems they get a bit sensitive about always being hidden away, but all that sawn timber looks wrong. Perhaps it looks better up North..

 

[Gulli]

We banished Yorkshire style to a far corner too; seems they get a bit sensitive about always being hidden away, but all that sawn timber looks wrong. Perhaps it looks better up North..

Each to their own I guess, love a freshly laid hedge! We've had everything done here over the last ten years or so, few hundred metres left for this winter I reckon

 

[robs1]

We banished Yorkshire style to a far corner too; seems they get a bit sensitive about always being hidden away, but all that sawn timber looks wrong. Perhaps it looks better up North..

How do you get to be demonstration farm, would love to get some hedges laid by real experts that know what they are doing

 

[Still Farming]

How do you get to be demonstration farm, would love to get some hedges laid by real experts that know what they are doing

Some of these conservation groups and weekend warriors do often look for jobs possibly

 

[Handy Andy]

Same this way

Same here