Hurstpierpoint & District Ploughing Match

Saturday saw a dozen or so cutters take part in the Hurstpierpoint open hedgelaying competition. My previous experience of these early sessions at ploughing matches has been mixed. I know I don't have a hope in hell's chance of a place and they are often very hard work on less than ideal hedges - but hope springs eternal and one always thinks that this one will be different and you'll get a nice cant.

At first glance this particular hedge looked great, not too heavy and with plenty of material to make a thick stock-proof hedge. A mixed hedge of mostly Blackthorn with some Hazel, Willow, Spindle and Hawthorne. It was an odd mix and may have been planted up or just  grown up along the line of an old neglected hedge as some sections contained a lot of thin young stems interspersed with large old Hawthorne.

My cant ran through the right-angle intersection of another hedge that you can see in the background of the photo above and was a real mix of Blackthorn and Spindle with a couple of old Hawthorn stems all intertwined but with very little substance and a lot of the Spindle was diseased and had bracket fungus on the stems close to the ground.

 

Having removed the considerable amount of dead Blackthorn the layable growth was rather sparse, especially around the section where the two hedges met. It was going to be a challenge making a thick hedge.

And as you can see from the finished job below it was rather uneven having some bulk where the bushy Spindle had been laid but thin elsewhere. I felt that I made a reasonable job of the stakes and binders so perhaps I could scrape a few points in these categories. Although we had one heavy shower mid-session the rain held off until we were finished.

By way of comparison here is Tony's rather splendid hedge, although he did have to lay in some out of line stems to provide bulk.

And here is a view of some of the other contenders for the top places.

One pleasant diversion was the splendid teams taking part in the ploughing competition. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to watch them in action.