Finished!

We've finally finished cutting the hedges. Well, for this year anyway!

No home should be without one

For the past two days I have been mostly stood at the business end of this little monster, feeding it the huge amount of brash that we had accumulated in the orchard and garden. 

brash, in British English, noun.  loose rubbish, such as broken rock, hedge clippings, etc; debris 

30% and I finally finished early on Sunday afternoon and the pumpkin patch is now home to an enormous pile of shredded wood, leaves and stems.

We started work on the hedges at the beginning of the month and have been hard at every day, except when it was pissing down with rain, or a family funeral needed to be attended. I've already mentioned that the hedges hadn't been cut for at least two years and needed at leat 6' of material taking off the top of them. 

We have dealt with branches up to 4" in diameter and covered with evil spines that are 2" long. As for the brambles, don't mention the brambles! They were twisting, branching stems up to 20' long with thorns that snag and grab at everything; your arms, your legs. They do their best to hinder every attempt to cut them, gather them and feed them in to the shredder. It almost became a vendetta to deal with the bloody things!

Our hands and legs are scratched and, despite gloves, splinter removal became a nightly occupation, but we have finally finished. 250 yards of agricultural hedging has been tamed and shredded.

This evening we celebrated this massive achievement with a Chinese takeaway. as neither of us had the energy to cook.