Being a country boy, son of a farm worker and having cycled for 50 odd yrs on country roads I think I have had 2 or 3 punctures attributed to cut hedges. I have had many, many more due to people chucking beer bottles out of cars on town roads and the grit our council uses in the winter salt ❗
As a boy I worked on the farm my grandfather and uncle worked and we used to hand cut the hedges in those days, cleaning up as we went 🙂
The farm is no longer a farm; http://www.caninerescue.co.uk Building and land sold off separately.

Nowadays like most work places mechanisation and automation has replaced the humble farm worker and traditional skills lost 🙄

+1Geda btw……

I get paid not to cut the hedges regularly so I don’t know where these farmers are that get paid by the yard to cut their hedges.

What you learn though is that there is a good reason that hedge cutting was done yearly through the years. The hedges that we moved to cutting every 3 years are in a far worse state now and take a much greater effort to maintain. So now I think we will go back to yearly and lose the environmental payment. Where we live manual hedge work is insanely expensive. We only do it where absolutely necessary.

Hawthorn is a major pain in the butt. We replant with native alternatives now that don’t have the spikes.

As one who grew up on a farm and used to do a load of hedgelaying myself;

The process is this- plant a row of hawthorn; leave it for 5-8 years. Lay it. Keep it trimmed with a flail. (Which would have been done with slasher or bill hook.) If the hedge is overgrown, take the side off with a shapesaw and lay it- probably needing a chainsaw and a lot of thinning at this point! In both cases, a well established hedge is maintained by flailing it every year or two, so it remains dense and close growing.

It makes me laugh the ignorant sh*t a lot of people spout- I’ve had people complain about us doing the latter, even though the end result is a far better wildlife corridor and healthy hedge. Likewise complaints about pollarding willow trees, even though established pollards will end up splitting their trunks if not cut back…

The timescale of these processes is a tad longer than someone trundling down the road on a bike for 10 minutes, on half a dozen occasions a year…

Edit- as above, hawthorn is a sod to work with- goes right through any glove, especially when it’s older! Makes for great firewood though…

Laying a hedge properly is a skill that shouldn’t be lost.
If it’s done right it’ll last a long time and has way more benefit than just flailing it. Just because somethin isn’t quick and easy doesn’t make it a worse option.

And this is Nithig to do with being a cyclist and more to do with growing up on a farm.
Tom k

you may need a solicitor once in your life, a doctor one a year, but you need a farmer three times a day.
im not sure where ‘it consultant’ fits into that equation but i get the impression a lot of the people on stw should be a bit more appreciative to farmers. the countryside isn’t a theme park

Laying a hedge properly is a skill that shouldn’t be lost.
If it’s done right it’ll last a long time and has way more benefit than just flailing it. Just because somethin isn’t quick and easy doesn’t make it a worse option.

You make hedge laying and hedge cutting sound like mutually exclusive options. They aren’t. Laying is used to restore a hedge that is open and straggly, usually because it hasn’t been cut regularly/properly in the first place. Once a hedge has been laid it will need annual trimming to maintain it. And unless you can find an army of peasants to cut them by hand this means using tractors and flail cutters.

im pretty sure there is no more hawthorn, blackthorn or even brambles round this way anymore.

those people still using that antiquated ‘inside tube’ system may disagree.

Hawthorn punctures was one of my main reasons for going tubeless.

Great idea! Lets get the world to revolve around cyclists! I love how it endears us to the general public.

jonah tonto – Member

you may need a solicitor once in your life, a doctor one a year, but you need a farmer three times a day.

I really like this, cheers!

Oh dear. Only on stw eh? Fat tosser in yellow lycra on 4k carbon toss machine argues the toss and tries to re educate the entire rural community
on the way things have been done forever…. just p1ss off back to the trail centre……..

Does anybody know whether farmers can be compelled to flay hedges (or otherwise manage their height) on a regular basis? I’m particularly concerned about the affect of an overgrown hedge on important views.

…if stimpy has stalked me to here, this is the thread I was referring to earlier, and you’ll clearly know what I’m talking about!

Oh dear. Only on stw eh? Fat tosser in yellow lycra on 4k carbon toss machine argues the toss and tries to re educate the entire rural community
on the way things have been done forever…. just p1ss off back to the trail centre……..

That has made my day, thanks beanieripper 😀

look, I posted a stupid thread after feeling a bit pissed off and it was partly tounge in cheek anyway – so I got flaied a bit – OK, I deserved that,

BUT, I am not “fat”, I don’t wear “yellow lycra”, I don’t live or work in a city, I don’t ride trailcentres except maybe once or twice a year at most, I do ride more than 10 times a year (actually about 3-4 times a week), I don’t live in a cottage, I don’t have a 4K bike, I don’t have a carbon bike, I wasn’t trying to teach anyone anything and I wasn’t having a go at all farmers (as I said above)….

Oh dear. Only on stw eh? Fat tosser in yellow lycra on 4k carbon toss machine argues the toss and tries to re educate the entire rural community
on the way things have been done forever…. just p1ss off back to the trail centre……..

I like the cut of your jib. 😆