Nature and time plot to blur edges, rot posts, tumble stones, but some powerful drive moves us to rebuild and re-fence, to put back those territorial markers and references; this side is mine, that yours.
Three years ago I sat with my ruler and pencil and Rural Land Register maps, working out the lengths of each field boundary on the farm, checking and rechecking that there really were eleven kilometres of hedge and bank, most of that in need of restoration. Sheep and cattle had scattered earth, stone and turf leaving a hedge line resembling a sour mouth full of rotting stumps and gaps.
First priority was to make safe the livestock; much of the fencing drooped and gaped and in one week I released two lambs from an almost deadly grip of saggy wire. The northern boundary was pretty much open to neighbouring land, and sheep crossed from one property to the other, mashing the mill leat dividing the farms. Dog walking was a nail biting activity; if I startled a red deer or fox the dogs could give chase beyond my recall. So started a ten-year programme of restoring the banks, hedges and fences.
Winter is the season for major farm earthworks. Whilst the grass, trees, and hedgerows sleep there is heavy machinery at work. Diggers dance along the hedge lines recreating the medieval Devon banks, those strange ramparts, topped with hedgerow plants and trees. Unless they are kept steep sided with a thick palisade of thorny, spiny growth, sheep bounce all over them, walk through them and create gaps that soon become broad livestock thoroughfares.
As a consequence of this effort I become ultra familiar with each bend, slope and growth of the boundaries. I walk back and forth, back and forth, fencing tools in hand, gazing first at the ground where the slumped earth has been removed and remade into banks, and then at the banks themselves; this is the time for revelation. The largest objects I find are several ploughshares in fields that it was thought had never been ploughed. Sometimes I expose shards of pottery: a piece with the date of George VI’s coronation still clear, or thick hand made glass from some bottle of liniment or beer. Occasionally I find whole bottles; my favourite has the legend “Corner’s Oils for Sheep and Cattle” moulded along the body.
I like a natural, wild growth of native plants and the neatness of a new fence does jar, but notwithstanding my fears that all the chopping, laying, banking, coppicing, fencing and general mauling about might lay the place to waste, Spring will make long bacon at me and burgeon regardless. It seems that a hedge is not dissimilar to a rose; you hack it back with some care, and it will burst out with new growth, knowing better than I that it will survive and thrive on drastic treatment.
Tanalised timber has absolutely no romance about it, but in time it stops slashing the landscape, weathering to a more acceptable grey, with hedges spilling through them. And of course fencing does keep areas wilder; foxgloves, primroses, orchids, ragged robin and marsh marigolds have regrouped now that unforgiving hooves can’t trample them.
Now, the stock wire is taut and twangs satisfactorily, the banks are reformed and smothered in summer colour. What looked sad and neglected, then raw and manhandled now bristles with plant life.
I can sleep more easily knowing that the livestock is contained. Finding cows or their tracks in your once neatly trimmed and planted garden is not something I’d recommend. If the cows have broken out of your farm I’d recommend that even less. So no matter if nature, time, livestock or elves tamper with your fences, it’s us that have to mend and keep good, so keeping good relations with our neighbours.
Published in The Landsman December 2008/January 2009 Issue11
