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a photographer's notebook issue 19 a tale of two reeds |
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harvested under the open skies of Norfolk, covered by canvas and sold directly to local thatchers
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fully laden with grain, ready to be threshed before being sold to thatchers the length and breadth of Devon
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Continuing my exploration of the provenance of thatch materials, I travelled
east to the Norfolk fens, with the photographic work of PH Emerson fresh
in my mind. As I drew closer to the reed beds of the broads, the wide open
skies teeming with bird life, black and white imagery of reapers with scythes fIowed through my imagination.
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Reed cutting had been part of a lively rural economy for centuries but by the early 2000s the industry was in severe decline with only a dozen or so cutters still active, many of whom were approaching, or in some cases past, retirement! Through a range of funding and training initiatives, the remaining reedcuttters, with help from the Broads Authority, managed to persuade a new generation of younger cutters, to take up the craft.
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Reed cutting had been part of a lively rural economy for centuries but by the early 2000s the industry was in severe decline with only a dozen or so cutters still active, many of whom were approaching, or in some cases past, retirement! Through a range of funding and training initiatives, the remaining reedcuttters, with help from the Broads Authority, managed to persuade a new generation of younger cutters, to take up the craft.
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Technology makes a big difference too. Just one man and his mower, getting by with a little help from his friends. George, photographed here, is the third generation of his family to harvest this plot. The scythe has in this instance been replaced by a Chinese rice cutter, an ‘Olympia’ type reed mower-binder, which both cuts and bundles.
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Technology makes a big difference too. Just one man and his mower, getting by with a little help from his friends. George, photographed here, is the third generation of his family to harvest this plot. The scythe has in this instance been replaced by a Chinese rice cutter, an ‘Olympia’ type reed mower-binder, which both cuts and bundles.
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Another day, another mower. Unfortunately, like much of the equipment used in traditional harvesting the reciprocating mowers are prone to mechanical breakdown, so here George is using a smaller Grillo BCS reedcutter which is fortunately more manoeuvrable around the narrower river banks.
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George has persuaded Grandad Billy to come out of retirement to help with the harvest. Billy was the first generation of the family to cut reeds here and is an expert at combing out the shorter reeds and grasses. First untying the sheaves, then using a ‘rake', essentially a chunk of wood with 3 large nails in it, he ‘dresses’ the reed before retying the bundle into a sheaf ready for thatching.
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George has persuaded Grandad Billy to come out of retirement to help with the harvest. Billy was the first generation of the family to cut reeds here and is an expert at combing out the shorter reeds and grasses. First untying the sheaves, then using a ‘rake', essentially a chunk of wood with 3 large nails in it, he 'dresses’ the reed before retying the bundle into a sheaf ready for thatching.
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Reed cutting is weather dependent seasonal work carried out mainly between December and April and so everyone has another line of work. Here one of George’s friends, Jim, who gardens in the summer months, keeps his hand in, gathering sheaves of cut water reed as the skies darken.
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Reed cutting is weather dependent seasonal work carried out mainly between December and April and so everyone has another line of work. Here one of George’s friends, Jim, who gardens in the summer months, keeps his hand in, gathering sheaves of cut water reed as the skies darken.
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With rain threatening the priority is to get the water reed harvest securely under canvas.
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With rain threatening the priority is to get the water reed harvest securely under canvas.
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Meanwhile back in Devon, now that the bales of wheat reed are safely under cover in the barn, the hard work is only just beginning. The harvest takes place over just a few weeks in the summer, with the rest of the year largely dedicated to threshing all the bales.
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In many other parts of the countryside the wheat reed for thatch is threshed in the field. In mid-Devon a triticale hybrid variety is used which combines the hardiness of rye with a high wheat yield meaning that the threshing process provides not only combed wheat reed for thatching, but also grain and animal fodder.
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In many other parts of the countryside the wheat reed for thatch is threshed in the field. In mid-Devon a triticale hybrid variety is used which combines the hardiness of rye with a high wheat yield meaning that the threshing process provides not only combed wheat reed for thatching, but also grain and animal fodder.
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The production line!
In the background a green tractor arm is forklifting a recently harvested bale onto the platform of the large red wheat reed comber. The sheaves are cut loose and fed into the threshing drum where the grain is beaten out of the straw. The ‘comber’ at the top of the machinery removes the ‘flag’, the shorter straw that is surplus to requirements as well as the shell around the corn, known as the ‘dowse’ all of which is packed into straw bales for animal fodder.
Thus the wheat is separated from the chaff.
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The production line!
In the background a green tractor arm is forklifting a recently harvested bale onto the platform of the large red wheat reed comber. The sheaves are cut loose and fed into the threshing drum where the grain is beaten out of the straw. The ‘comber’ at the top of the machinery removes the ‘flag’, the shorter straw that is surplus to requirements as well as the shell around the corn, known as the ‘dowse’ all of which is packed into straw bales for animal fodder.
Thus the wheat is separated from the chaff.
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To get the threshed bale to the correct size the bundler operator has to work inside the bundler itself.
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To get the threshed bale to the correct size the bundler operator has to work inside the bundler itself.
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In Devon old tractors never die… they just retire to barns to see out their days as extractors…
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In Devon old tractors never die… they just retire to barns to see out their days as extractors…
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An occasional dose of oil in the wheat reed comber is a mere drop in the ocean in a constant cycle of maintenance.
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An occasional dose of oil in the wheat reed comber is a mere drop in the ocean in a constant cycle of maintenance.
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Some rare late afternoon sunshine brightens the heavy work as a newly threshed bale of wheat reed is rolled off the production line.
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Some rare late afternoon sunshine brightens the heavy work as a newly threshed bale of wheat reed is rolled off the production line.
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Somewhat to my surprise my next newsletter will be the twentieth edition. When I started creating these occasional mailings, I never thought I would find enough to write about! To celebrate reaching the big 2-0 I thought I would revisit some more conceptual work from my pre-digital days over 20 years ago, and juxtapose it with some of my more contemporary imagery on the same theme.
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Somewhat to my surprise my next newsletter will be the twentieth edition. When I started creating these occasional mailings, I never thought I would find enough to write about! To celebrate reaching the big 2-0 I thought I would revisit some more conceptual work from my pre-digital days over 20 years ago, and juxtapose it with some of my more contemporary imagery on the same theme.
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