WILDTHINGSstill help out
WILDTHINGSstill help out
LOOKING for wild things can be practical as well as economical. Do you bed up your bantams with bracken, pick your walking-stick from the hedgerow and distil garden fertiliser out of comfrey leaves? If so, you are doing what was commonplace and even necessary on family farms until recent times – using wild crops as part of the farm economy.
Taking food from the wild has never really gone out of fashion. Blackberry and apple tarts, wild mushrooms, whortleberry (or bilberry) jam and elderflower wine are so popular today that they are sold commercially, as well as gathered for the farm kichen. But before the First World War, inedible wild crops were regularly used on the farm.
Hedges, for instance, were not just a source of sloes and holly. When they were cut back, almost all the hedge wood was used or sold. Well-grown hazel was used to make hurdles for folding sheep, while younger hazel was suitable for bean-sticks or made into rick pegs or spars for thatching. At the hay harvest, hedge parings, thorns and brambles were placed under hayricks to keep them dry.
Starting in 1910 and continuing for decades, Dartmoor farmer William Dunning kept a diary indicating the variety of wild and semi-wild things he used on his 19ha (47acre) farm. The entry for Aug 23 1911, shows he was: "Cutting rushes and preparing for thatcher." The local thatcher, Mr Aggett, used rushes to thatch the hay and corn ricks on the farm. Mr Dunning cut wood in October and "10 bundles of spar sticks" in November for the thatcher. Mr Aggett also did farm-work part-time and Mr Dunning kept an account of the number of days he worked and the bundles of spars which he received as payment.
On Nov 25, Mr Dunning put "furze around hayrick", which was putting gorse around the haystack to stop the sheep nibbling into it.
After cutting wood, he would bind it and make faggots, poles and sticks or logs for the fire, then build a great wood-rick in the orchard. On Dec 3, he reported: "Sawing, bound five faggots; any amount poles. Lots of cutting wood and sticks."
In the summer, he used to cut the top layer of peat, or turves, known locally as "fags" or "vags", and cart it back to dry off before the winter. On June 4, 1913, Mr Dunning was "tending fags"
In days past farmers made much more use of the natural materials that grew wild on their
land. Jacqueline Sarsby found out more from the diary of Dartmoor farmer William Dunning
Utilising wild crops: Making hurdles. Inset: Making "spar sticks" for use when thatching.