Faggots!

Happy New year everybody! I hope you are all well rested and ready for the coppicing season.

Over the last month or so I have been helping Iain Loasby with the Coppice he manages in Potters Bar. All the hazel came down before Christmas and now we are gathering together the different products to sell.

This year Iain has a order for faggots. Watford district council have ordered floating berms to place alongside the bank to reduce bank erosion and faggots are ideal for this.

Faggots can be used for a few different things. Traditionally they were used as kindling for baker ovens to keep the bread oven at a high temperature. They can be used as material for dead hedging and most importantly, making forts.

But one of the best things about faggots is that they use up the parts of the tree that would otherwise be left as brash. Each 20kg faggots can be sold for £8 Each, which is not bad for a bunch of twigs.

To prepare a faggot Iain has made a bench that allows him to bundle and trim the faggots. He based his on an Alan Water’s design and it works a treat.

So there you go. Faggots are great and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.