Friday, January 17, 2014

Hedge Laying

Via Bonnie Gadsden



Over two thousand years older than chain link.

 A hedge with summer foliage. A living hedge not only keeps livestock fenced but also prevents soil erosion and water runoff. Living hedges are good wind blocks and snow collectors as well as habitat to birds, insects and small mammals. And they sequester carbon, rather than produce it, such as during the manufacture of chain link or plastic.

4 comments:

  1. That is facinating. With several acres to fence, I might have to try my hand at that.
    Thanks Brock.

    Miss Violet

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  2. The also shade crops if not trimmed and compete for water and nutrients. Walking a 40 acre row hedge with a "hedge knife" to manually trim them (looks like a cleaver on a haft) was real man's work. So there was good with the bad. We still see quite a few of the old hedgerows in these parts, but now they're all grown tall. Mostly hedge-apple (Osage orange) trees. Most farmers ripped them out in the 60's and 70's to make fields larger when field equipment got bigger. Also, indiviudal farms began to quit having livestock as the EPA cut in with regs, made it less profitable.

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