All Seasons

We planted a hazel whip a few weeks before the millennium; I stood close to it and watched a beautiful sunrise on 1 January 2000, thinking off-handedly about the millennium bug. A lot of people thought it was a scam; a phantasm created by consultants as a fee-earner. Well, maybe there was some of that, but I spent a lot of hours in 1999 hunting them in computer programs. The main corrective, I seem to remember was the insertion of a semi-colon which, after 01/01/2000 became compulsory, having formerly been optional; I developed quite an affection for semi-colons and still use them whenever I dare

The whip is now a substantial thicket, 6 or 8 metres tall. Some of it was cut to make stakes when we commissioned an extension to our house built from straw. The sharpened stakes, driven into the straw bales, pin them together and prevent them shifting as the straw becomes load-bearing and has renders and plasters applied to it. Smaller hazel stakes are driven in as fixing points for external down-spouts and internal furniture such as our plate-rack.

Hazel is a 'pioneer' species, one of the first (along with its kissing-cousin birch) to establish itself on the land exposed as the glaciers retreated from Britain 10,000 years ago. Although individual trees may only last 80 years of so, it has a claim to being the oldest timber in Britain. It's over 40 years since I read The Woodlanders, but I'm fairly sure it featured heavily as the basis of a craft-based economy - producing (guess what) stakes and building timber, as well as charcoal and hurdles. 'Coppice with Standards' was the first formally named and documented form of woodland management. The long-lived 'standards' were typically oak, the 'coppice' - cut every 5-10 years - was almost always birch and hazel; I wonder how many place names in Britain are Birch or Hazel Coppice

Hazel catkins are just about the earliest source of pollen for the bees - closer to the apiary than the 'Christmas roses' in the village. Supposedly they are a home to dormice, but I've never seen one. Songbirds comb the branches for aphids in summer.

We don't try to pick from the tree, rather waiting for them to fall, or shaking trunks to provoke them - so I mow underneath before they start falling. We compete with the squirrels of course; they leave piles of empty shells to taunt us, but in truth there are enough for us all in most years

Hazels and Christmas are linked in more households than ours, I think. In the past I have made baklava or hazel-chocolate spread. This year, we should manage savoury pâté, but hopefully also something sweetened with honey too, to stitch the two ends of the year together