When in the New Forest don't be surprised if you come across what looks like farming on the edge - 
bales of twiggy heather in remote areas well away from the nearest farm.It's hard to imagine any livestock making a
meal out of twigs, stones, moss and Lichens. Thankfully no livestock, not even Reindeer have to eat the stuff. This baled material has a very specific use, its used for road building and water course management, much of it within the New Forest and other Forestry commission managed areas. When tightly packed and in anaerobic conditions heather rots very slowly so it's ideal for use in wet places.
Currently baled heather is being used as part of the effort to reinstate some of the New Forest mires that were pointlessly drained just a few decades ago. Dams are created with the heather and as it decays it becomes a substrate for bog plants to colonise and the material becomes stabilised. In time the processes of silting and accumulation of plant debris creates a permanent impediment to water flow and so the mire returns to it's former glory.
The effectiveness of heather as a base material in wet places has long been recognised, I've heard stories that Salisbury Cathedral has heather as part of it's foundations, built as it is on a very boggy bit of the Avon valley. Ancient man used packed heather to build causeways across the hazardous bogs on the southern heaths. Peat core samples going back many thousand years have good solid heather twigs in them showing it's excellent resistance to decay when immersed and free of oxygen.
The images show Jim Hoare, a contractor from Bransgore who does the baling for the Forestry commision. He has a sound knowledge of how to bale this unusual material. The tough heather and foreign bodies accelerate wear and tear on the machinery, every few acres the baler has to be checked over and all damaged parts replaced. Jim takes it steady to avoid serious damage to the equipment. His mate rides shotgun on the bale sledge watching for problems and manually operating the gates that marshall the bales into tidy batches.
A gallery of images shows more of the action
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