Tomorrow afternoon, our visiting French thatcher, Stephan, will demonstrate his art to all comers at the Environment Centre at Riverton. He's the real McCoy, to use the French expression, and has been thatching in France for many years, having studied under the now-mainly-extinct French thatchers of old. He even has the bow-legged gait of a genuine weight-lofting, ladder-climbing tradesman. Stephan and I scoured the countryside this afternoon in search of the reeds and rushes he needs for the demonstration and came up somewhat short-handed but we are not concerned - he is the master of the interesting tale and has shared more than a few of those with me and I can vouch for him - he'll be very interesting. Most fascinating for me was his description of the capping method he uses, where cow manure and reed segments are worked with bare feet (his and his wife's) then smoothed onto the ridge, covering the join. Once it's as thick as a well-stuffed mattress, iris rhizomes are pressed into the mix where they root and grow, providing a gorgeous picture for years to come. We are starting at 1:30, following our food-forest garden tour for the Organic Agriculture group from Invercargill.
4 comments:
Maybe one of your Southland beer barons (do you have those?) could act as patron, à la F. Scott Fitzgerald:
"There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby's house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the "period" craze a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay five years' taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched with straw."
Our barons are of the milk sort and I don't see them looking to support traditional crafts like thatching - thoroughly modern misters, they. Still, your suggestion is an elegant one and I'll try to track down a baron of some sort - perhaps Louis Crimp's my man.
Spent a merry hour with 2 octogenarian "thatchers" in Wiltshire, UK some years ago. Complete with dark suit and bowler hat they looked a real sight. While they did demonstrate the fine art of thatching, much of the time was spent in regaling us with tales of the past. That is until our host pointed out how much an hour these merry 'gentlemen' were charging. And could we let them get back to work!!
Our hosts home was 2 storied with a very steep pitched roof that was amazingly well thatched. Your info on the capping was interesting, Rg, but I feel the capping these thatchers used was somewhat different.
Concrete, Fred?
I'm not at all surprised to hear of the regaling. Our thatcher was a most loquacious man. Seems he spends much of his time talking with old people, and they with him, about all manner of things. He says the old people are adamant the climate in France has changed considerably during their lifetime. He(Stephan) is greatly concerned at what climate change is doing to the reed beds he so desperately needs for his trade. His opinion of climate-change opponents is not printable here (plus, it's in French but from what I heard, it'd strip the thatch off your roof!)
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