Hedging

If you've ever seen a crane or aerial shot of British farmland, you probably recall small plots separated by dark borders. Those are hedges -- not the stuff of American farms at the borders of fields, marking the margins of cultivated land, but barriers intended to keep the cattle in one small field from wandering over and eating the corn. This one-reel short concerns itself with the man who maintains those hedges. With his Land Girl assistant, he wanders over to a hedge, takes a few casual whacks, bends the branch over and there you have it. He'll come back in a couple of years to do some trimming and that's his job.

It surely pleased the rural moviegoer to see their work on the big screen, with perhaps a comment among themselves about the technique of the hedger. It must have also been a comfort to the many farm boys in the army -- that's why the hedger's assistant is a girl -- to see their green and pleasant land being kept up for them to return to after the war was finally done.

This makes for quite an interesting ten minutes that might make you look at the hedges you walk past on your country walk a bit differently next time. It does matter how tall or short they are: too short and dense and the sunshine can't penetrate; too high and the lower parts thin out negating the value of this thing altogether. In many ways it's artistic to watch the hedge man (and his women's land army buddy) as he chops, cuts, weaves and layers the branches whilst removing the dead wood and brambles. By the conclusion, after the hazel or willow binding, it all looks completely natural and will serve to keep things in (and out) for the next twenty years with the thorns proving more effective than barbed wire ever could. The narration is a little dryly descriptive, but i wonder if it's a dying art we are watching here?