Rural Crafts No. 2 - Hedging

Someone's bought a derelict cottage and a parcel of land. They're going to live the dream. Before building work starts, while the architect and planning officer negotiate the scope and scale of the extension it's time to re-establish some boundaries. And where they can they'll lay the hedges - a craft that's largely died out as farmers these days prefer to tame their boundaries astride a monster machine, filling the moribund winter months with the roar and crackle of a brush cutter rather than the slash of a bill'ook.

This 200m stretch is a triumph of hope over experience. The saplings in the long neglected hedge line have been slashed, bent and woven into submission. Give it 12 months and it'll thicken up. Note how the brushwood side is to the field - to deter any beast with an ambition to escape.

There is, believe it or not, a National Hedge Laying Society - and they really are trying to stop things getting out more.....