I'm Dave Symonds the local thatcher to Chideock for the last 50 years and I grow my own thatching reeds
to furnish the roofs in the local area. We have always farmed in a traditional way
because the end product that we're trying to grow is thatching reed.
We don't use a lot of chemicals or fertilisers and
consequently the wildlife and the hedges and the margins all benefit in my mind from that.
This land at Doghouse was farmed traditionally. It's always been arable and it's always been
nearly always a plough-base cultivations, and right out to the hedge, right up to the fence. Every last
square inch of field was tried to make available. And the other thing that was very noticeable to me
when I started cultivating. The soil had absolutely no structure. It was just one path
with a machine and it was down to talcum powder with no fibre and no nothing in it.
So I knew that it's going to need a lot of building up. The first thing I did to it, was there's three and
six and nine metre margins around every field now. Some are wild meadow, some are nectar pollen.
And that was on the National Trust suggestion that we tried to make corridors for wildlife.
The land was just bare land. It's dirt, it's not soil, and it's going to take a year or two
to turn it back into soil. The previous people did nothing wrong they just did it
as everybody across the country is doing you know. They ploughed it, cultivated it, sprayed it to death.
Fertilised it to death and took a maximum crop to feed as many people as they could per acre.
I'm moving to a no-till for the whole 170 acres I farm. I mean the National Trust land
is only just a small percentage of that and there's lots of reasons. The soil is
running out the gates when it rains through constant sort of min-till and other methods.
It's also economics. A £20,000 drill is only one part.
It's a third less diesel used in all the whole operations.
It's put a whole different mindset to me because I have to think about using cover crops for fertility.
All the thatch that we grow is used locally. Very little of it does much more than a couple or
three miles from the farm. Most of our work is close. We're doing more as the years go by
for the trust. Originally we were just to go Golden Cap Estate, but because of the product we grow
and our link with the trust, we are now doing a percentage of work at the Killerton Estate.
All my working life it's given me the most pleasure to produce something,
and to see it right through to the end. And when it goes on to a historic building or
a building with a lot of character in, that is just that little buncey because it could end up
on a traditional cottage. Or it could end up on somewhere like Woodsford Castle at Dorchester.
I've got a good memory so if I go 30 years back I can tell people the field
that their roof came from. And that gives me even more satisfaction to know that this is going to
last 25, 30 years, fingers crossed. Seeing something I've produced been responsible for. A whole year
finished all pristine and looking really nice. And doing a good job keeping the water out.