Surrey Homes | SH101 | June 2023 | Education Supplement inside

Aside from the animals, there’s
another productive (almost
commercial!) arm of Coopers
Farm – growing fruit and veg
Every spring I approach my
vegetable growing with boundless
enthusiasm and by the time
summer comes around I am overwhelmed
by it all. Not to mention the angst of going
on holiday just as the sweet corn / beans /
courgettes peak. You’d think by now it would have
occurred to me to scale back the March/April end of the
operation so as to retain a modicum of control later in
the summer. But for 2023 it’s been business as usual!
During the dark winter months I pored over all those
seed catalogues and made a New Year’s resolution to
be moderate, but blow me down if by February the
seed companies hit you with irresistible offers that,
together with their pictures of glorious
abundance, are irresistible. I’m off again.
March, April and May were spent
madly sowing, pricking out and potting
on and now in June it’s time to plant
out the greenhouse bounty and sow
other seeds direct into the warmer
soil. Always a tense time as a useful
morning spent sowing row upon
row of radish, spring onion, lettuce,
rocket – all carefully marked with
lolly sticks – is like a sweetie shop for
the team. Irresistible. If the hens get
a whiff of the action they’ll be up there scratching
and pecking and reducing my soldier-straight rows to
a glorified seed free mess. Aaagh. Let’s hope the new
fence is high enough to deter a determined chicken.
The peas have been busy germinating in a gutter
suspended like a hammock in the greenhouse to
stop the mice having a feast. And now it’s time
to plant them out, which heralds the annual trip
to the hazel coppice to collect pea sticks.
East Sussex is the most wooded county in the UK and
most traditional farms include at least two or three small
parcels of woodland or shaws which would have been
The peas have been
busy germinating in
a gutter suspended
like a hammock in
the greenhouse to
stop the mice having
a feast
coppiced to supply firewood and a whole host of other
valuable materials like fencing, brooms and tool handles.
And then later through the 18th and 19th centuries,
coppiced wood provided charcoal for the all important
smelting of iron, a key industry in the High Weald.
Coppicing is the process that occurs
when a tree is felled and new sprouts arise
from the cut stump known as a stool.
This process can be carried out over and
over again and is sustainable over several
hundred years with the stool getting
ever larger in diameter. All broadleaf
trees can be coppiced but some – ash,
hazel, oak, sweet chestnut and lime –
are best, while others like beech, cherry
and poplar really don’t respond. And
conifers won’t do it at all, chop them
down and they simply shut up shop.
Coppice is felled in blocks termed coupes (or fells,
cants or haggs) with five or six being cut in any season.
At Coopers we have been coppicing our woods for
the past ten years, albeit on a one woman and her
chainsaw scale, but when I’ve harvested this year’s poles,
sticks and branches there’s every possibility we might
just complete our first hagg (favourite descriptive).
While the peas will be supported in this time honoured
way, the melons – a new project for 2023 – will apparently
need tights to act as protective slings. Not much call for
American Tans in the farming world so – rather like the visit
to the coppice for pea sticks – charity shops here I come.
Find out more about daily life at Coopers Farm by following Jane on Instagram @coopersfarm
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