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.