Alongside the hoe and the sickle, the billhook is one of the basic tools that made it possible for people to live in Europe prior to the industrial revolution. Whereas a sickle is used to cut grass, rough vegetation, and the cereal harvest, the billhook is used to cut wood, usually green wood, up to a few inches in diameter. Billhooks come in a vast range of shapes and sizes, ranging from crescent shaped (similar to a sickle but heavier) to a flat blade (similar to a meat cleaver, but thicker), often with a curved beak at the end.
Recorded Uses of the Billhook
There are very few written records of how agriculture was conducted in Europe prior to the industrial revolution, and almost none describing agriculture prior to the Roman conquests. This has contributed to Europeans in general, and European academics in particular, viewing farming primarily as a commercial activity, and to ignore its role in self-sufficient communities in which money played little or no role at all. Similarly, when Europeans established their global empires, they were able to understand cultures in which farmers were growing food to supply large towns, such as in India and China, but had no understanding of the subsistence farmers whom they encountered in North and South America, Africa, and many other places in the world.
Consequently, even though the billhook is such a basic tool for the small-scale farmer, its role has been largely overlooked in academic literature. When it is recorded, it is often in association with a specialised craft, such as barrel making, hurdle making, charcoal production, etc. Further back, manuscripts from the Middle Ages, and from Roman times, illustrate the billhook being used to prune vines and fruit trees. Archaeological remains, however, point to a widespread use of the billhook well before the Roman era; indicating that the tool played a much wider role in early European farming. Older people, like myself, remember the billhook being the tool of choice for chopping wood for the kitchen fire, and it remained in common use in the countryside until quite recently, but mainly for private, rather than commercial, purposes.
The Billhook & the Subsistence Coppice
The original use of the billhook was probably in subsistence coppicing. Nowadays, when we think of self sufficiency, we tend to think of food, even though energy plays a much greater role than agriculture in our own, global economy. In the majority of places where human beings now live, they could not survive without fire in one form or another. In cold places you need to have a lot of fuel stored, if you are to survive the winter without exhausting local supplies. The availability of fuel is often more significant on limiting population size and overall way of life, than is the availability of food. The pre-historical breakthrough in fuel production was coppicing. Some trees – such as hazel, willow, ash, chestnut, oak – will re-grow several shoots from the stump after being cut down. Because the roots remain intact, these shoots grow very rapidly, and after a few years the tree will have become large enough to be cut again. The billhook is the perfect tool for this task. It can be used not only to cut the stems, but also to trim them, and cut them to length, so that they can be bundled together, and stacked up to dry.
Different types of tree grow at different rates; some trees may be grown mainly for purposes other than firewood, such as building or craft work, and trees growing in more light, or with their roots closer to water, might grow faster. Over time, each household knows how many coppices to cut each year – and which ones to cut – in order to keep the home constantly supplied with the fuel that is needed; and this is the principal factor in determining the size of each smallholding. In a subsistence community, there is no point in having more wood than you need, or more trees than you can manage.
Winter Work
Nowadays, tools are relatively plentiful, and, generally, not too expensive. Many people cut their coppices with a petrol chainsaw, and a sharp hand axe might, in some circumstances, be better adapted to cutting the thicker trunks than a billhook. But in many ways, the practical realities of life have not really changed since pre-historical times, and most days in winter the subsistence gardener is likely to find themselves with their favourite billhook in hand, cutting and trimming wood. For trimming, one holds the wood in one hand, and slices off the side branches with the billhook held in the other; when cutting, you can use a block. With a little practice, it becomes quite straightforward to cut through wood several inches in diameter.
What one finds is that, even with just one or two hours work per day, wood starts to pile up in enormous quantities as the winter months slip by, providing at least a partial solution to one’s personal need for energy – zero carbon, and zero cost.
