farming and conservation

@557
I thought it was probably time the site had a thread for this. Save our conversations derailing other threads such as the post your photos one. Couldn't find an appropriate forum so I stuck it in here.

Threshing again today which gave me an opportunity to ask a few questions about the future of thatching straw production.

Farmer Paul was more confident than me that the old drums could be kept going into the future. The argument being that as thatching straw becomes scarcer the price will rise making the repair costs more affordable.
At the end of the day, although complex overall the individual components are relatively simple and being made from wood they could be replaced indefinitely. I guess it's like the old broom that is 100 years old despite having 30 new heads and 15 new handles.
Likewise the iron work such as pulley wheels, cogs etc can be repaired or even re-cast.
His son Tobias also suggested that modern combines could be adapted to do the job. The headers would need to be changed so that the straw could be fed into the drum sideways rather than end on as they are designed to work. They couldn't do it in the field but would have to be static and probably fed by hand and would still need some sort of buncher rather than go through the baling mechanism.

The main hurdle to keeping the trade going is convincing more farmers to grow the old long straw varieties. The low grain yield of old varieties (around a third of modern wheats) and the labour intensive nature of the whole process making it unattractive for the larger money driven farms of today.
It's always going to be a niche industry (some even call it hobby farming) but the demand for thatch remains fairly constant as roofs need to be re-thatched every 25 years or so and the ridges need replacing every 15 or so. Hopefully the future is not as insecure as I thought.

Talking of replacing ridges, one of our close neighbours is having their ridge replaced at the moment and I know both the thatcher and the house owners so I'm going to go and observe tomorrow and hopefully learn more about the process as I don't really know much about it. I'll post some pics and pass on what I learn.

 

Good call.

Sounds like they are thinking ahead so the traditions can continue going forward. Glad to hear it. On the newer equipment side of the equation, over here we have a few guys running “stripper” headers on combines. They strip the head off the standing wheat, leaving all the straw (except what’s run over) standing in the field. Would that standing straw be able to be cut and bundled for thatch? Just spitballing...

I’m still amazed thatch lasts that long.

I like to learn! Oh yeh, I didn’t forget you are a chef. I think some of our first discussions were about vegetarianism etc.

I looked at the food subforum the other day and have been thinking it needs spicing up. Might have to work on that later on...

 

Those stripper headers sound interesting. So long as the straw isn't damaged I don't see why you couldn't remove the grain in the field and then use a binder to collect the straw.
How much do they cut off? Length matters when it comes to thatching. The stack we threshed yesterday was too short and probably can't be used for thatch.
I'll talk to Tobias and see if he's had experience of stripper headers.

Non political forums like the food ones are a great place to find common ground and are a good place for idiological opposites to come together for discussions and might raise the civility levels around here if they were used more. We all like good food and arguments as to which are the best foods do not split along a left right axis.

 

Just as I'd finished typing out that last post Farmer Paul walked past my truck so I jumped out and asked about stripper headers.
Turns out it is a way of doing it and there's a guy in Essex who grows 200 acres and another in Hampshire who does it like that. The straw is then collected in round bales.
The thatchers don't like it though. The straw isn't as good. It gets damaged by the balers and is cut a bit late. The wheat needs to be cut when it is still a bit green for thatch. They will use it but only when there is nothing else available. It goes for the same price despite being cheaper to produce.
Paul describes roofs done using this straw as looking like hedgehogs.
The guys using this method have not been allowed to join the thatching straw producers association because their aims include continuation of traditional farming methods.
It's possible that Paul has a bias towards the traditional methods so I'll ask the thatcher about it this afternoon. Thatchers are a traditional bunch too though so I might still get the same bias.

 

Well, the thatcher said the same about straw harvested with stripper headers. Main problem being that it is over ripe when it is cut and therefore not as strong or long lasting. He did say that it wasn't the method that was the problem though and if it was harvested a bit earlier and not crushed in the round bales it would be OK. He did add that the way we do it is the best though.

This is the roof he was working on.

The thatch on this barn conversion is reed rather than straw but the ridge has to be made with straw or sedge as reeds can't be bent over without breaking.


The bundles you see going lengthways along the ridge are tightly packed reeds then the straw is placed on top at right angles and fixed with hazel which is bent in half and hammered into the reed bundles like staples. It's then combed to make sure the straw isn't bent and carrying rain water into the roof and secured with hazel rods held in place with more of the staples.
I spent about an hour up the ladder on the opposite side from which he was working watching him do his thing.

The wire you see is there to stop birds from burrowing in and nesting in the thatch.
Graham, the thatcher works with both straw and reed but says he prefers using straw despite reed being easier due to not needing to be combed straight before you use it.
Remember you said you couldn't believe straw thatch lasts up to 25 years? Well reed can last for 60 to 70 years but most think it is less attractive.
The final job is to make the witches cap which is the raised end of the ridge you can see on this image.

This practise goes back to medieval times and its purpose is to stop witches landing on your roof as its triangular shape is known to give protection against evil spirits.

 

When re-thatching the whole roof it is usually not necessary to strip it back to the timbers. You can normally just remove the worst of the rotten straw and lay the new thatch over previous layers. Roofs can end up six foot thick and occasionally the original base layer can be 500 years old. 6 foot is about the limit the oak timbers can support though.
Imagine the insulation provided by that thickness of thatch.

 

Ok, I can see a stripper header would not work at all if the straw needs to be cut green. And yeh baling with a round baler like I use would smash all the straw flat so it wouldn’t have any rigidity. The straw I bale for bedding is always better quality in small square bales that are not compressed as tightly as the big round bales. My uncle had a binder that cut straw or whatever needed bundling and bound it in bundles. I believe it was originally horse drawn and later converted to be pulled with a tractor. That would be much better than a baler. I never saw it in use as he started using a small square baler by the time I worked for him. The binder just sat in a barn collecting dust.

I was trying to remember the company that builds the stripper headers I’ve seen and finally did. It’s Shelbourne Reynolds and they are manufactured in Suffolk, England! I worked summers for my uncle who was a wheat farmer in north east Colorado through high school and college. The stripper headers were starting to gain popularity with people transitioning to no till practices instead of tilling fallow ground several times each summer. Too dry there to raise a crop every year so ground was fallow one year to accumulate moisture and then grew a crop the second year. Leaving all the straw standing really helped stop weeds from sprouting and also drastically improves water infiltration and reduces erosion. I don’t know why they aren’t more popular today, but I was through that area a few weeks ago and didn’t see much more percentage acreage harvested with stripper heads than back in the early ‘90’s when I was working there last.

Yes, the R value of six feet of thatch would be enormous for energy savings. Thanks for the pictures, everything is easier to understand with some visual references.

As far as food and cooking I don’t cook as much as I used to. My wife does the majority now. To tie in with the conservation theme of this new thread, we grow most of our own food. As a matter of fact, I’m running the last three canners tonight as I type this. My wife canned 21 quarts and 6 pints of baked beans, 14 quarts of whole tomatoes, and the last 3 quarts of green beans for the year today. I’m finishing up pressure canning the 21 quarts of tomatoes she had jarred and ready to can when I got home.

 

Remember I posted a few pics of us threshing by steam a couple of months ago?
Well, we had an aspiring documentary maker come along with a decent quality camera and a drone to record the process.
There's a nice interview with Farmer Paul and a short word from Graham the thatcher I visited yesterday.

 

Loved that film. Paul is a knowledgeable, interesting bloke who is easy to listen to.
The drone shots were good.

how many problems are there, owing to mechanisation and huge farms?

 

Problems for the thatching trade?
Big farms just aren't interested in growing the old long straw varieties.
The grain yields are too low compared with modern wheats and the labour costs of harvesting the old fashioned way and threshing means it's not really that profitable.
Paul does have a combine which he uses on other crops but it's nearly as old as the threshing drum.

 

He really is.
Oh how he loves to talk though.
He's never dull though and an expert on many topics.
He's a bit of a local celebrity, most people know who he is around here.

 

Just found a bit more Farmer Paul for you Sally.
I hadn't seen this before.
It's from 2010 and since then Tobias has got married and the old part of the house Paul talks about has been restored for him and his wife to live in.

 

Can’t imagine living in a 500 year old house. Amazing.
Paul is doing a great job by growing old strains of grain. Good for the gene pool.

 

Not that unusual around here.
Just down the road is St Peter's Hall brewery which is a 13th century half moated manor house. I have worked there a few times over the years in the kitchen. The beer is made in a large barn behind and the Hall itself is a pub.


Not the oldest building nearby though.
Bungay castle was built around 1100.

 

Staggering that they are still standing.
The brewery is a lovely looking building. Is there an attached restaurant?

 

In the first picture the large hall to the left of the front door is used as the restaurant, complete with 16th century French tapestries hanging on the wall. To the right is the bar and the wing coming out from the right is the kitchen. The kitchen has a crypted roof. Not the first time I've worked in a kitchen with a medieval crypted roof either.
They say ''Americans think 200 years is a long time and the British think 200 miles is a long way''. I guess that's true of Australia too.

 

Some of the stone mullion windows and other fixtures were not original to the manor. They came from a nearby abbey which fell into ruin after Henry VIII dissolved the catholic monasteries.

 

There's a lovely twisting narrow oak staircase leading from the kitchen which forks halfway up, one fork leads of to a beautiful oak panelled room used for private functions and the other goes to the floor above. Where it forks it is so narrow you have to turn sideways to get through.

 

200 years is a very old house here. Unless you’re an indigenous person in a cave over winter.

 

For skinny servants?

 

Not sure that the kitchen was originally where it is now.
The bar has a small fireplace with a built in bread oven in the wall so I suspect that was the original kitchen.
These old buildings are changed and added to over the centuries so it's not always possible to tell what is original or not or what each room was used for.

 

It certainly has a selection of different building and decoration features.
Long walk between the kitchen and restaurant.

 

LOL.
Just found the full length version of the film where Paul is talking about the house.
I'm in it!
I'd forgotten about Matthew sitting in the corner with his camera filming us.
Right at the start, squaring up with Paul after my juggling convention. Paying for the beef and lamb I bought off him minus the food his friends bought off me (I never charged Paul and his family for what they ate).
This is years before I started squatting in his back meadow.
I only moved in here to build my new motorhome but 5 years later I'm still here and the motorhome is nearly finished.


Edit. Listening back it seems I did charge Paul for what he bought back then.
Paul probably insisted.
Since then though I did the food for Tobias's wedding and for the wake when Paul's wife sadly died without letting him pay me.

 

Tossing that straw must have half killed you!
Sad that Emily died. They still seemed quite young-ish.

 

No, Paul's wife Sue died.
Emma is the daughter in law.
The straw pitching is hard work. Some days we move 5 tons and we had some hot days this year.
It gets easier once you learn how to use a pitchfork. It used to kill my arms but it's not so bad now.