| In winter, one of
the most familiar sights in Broadland is a reed-cutter
at work on a Broad or by the riverside. For the
reed-cutter's harvest is a winter one, beginning about
Christmas, when the blade is off the reeds, and lasting
until March or April, when the appearance of the 'colts'
or young reeds puts a stop to the cutting. Eel-catchers,
marshmen, millmen, and the men who sail the cruising
yachts, take part in this belated harvest, which comes
at a time when there is little else for them to do in
the daytime, and only wild fowl to be watched for at
dusk and dawn. Scythe and meag are used in cutting the
reeds, and the cutter works either in a wide, flat
bottomed marsh boat, or on a plank projecting from a
boat or laid flat in a cleared space among the reeds.
If, however, the reeds grow in shallow water, the men
put on wading-boots and work in the water. The cut reeds
are laid in the boat or where they are to be stacked.
There they are tied in bundles or 'shooves', five of
which are supposed to have an aggregate circumference of
six feet, and they are sold by the fathom, a fathom of
reeds being five 'shooves'. They are used for various
purposes, such as supporting builders' plasterwork,
thatching cottages, park lodges, and ornamental
boat-houses, and screening young shrubs and fruit trees;
but the demand for them has decreased considerably since
the days when there were 'scythe rights' on the reed
fens and the reeds were carefully cultivated. But there
are still many hundred acres of reeds in Broadland, and
the cutting of them means a welcome addition to many
scanty incomes. So, too, does the cutting and selling of
'gladden' and a species of rush locally known as
'bolder'; but turf or peat cutting, which formerly found
employment for many of the marshmen, can hardly now be
called a profitable business. Still, there are a few men
who cut and dry the riverside hovers and the boggy
surface soil of some of the swampy lands; for peat is a
good and cheap substitute for coal in the hearths of the
marshmen's cottage homes. |
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