SUFFOLK farmer Paul Watkin once kept a wall map showing neighbouring villages, with dots marking each roof thatched in the straw he grew on his fourth-generation farm. Chair of the National Thatching Straw Growers Association, Mr Watkin is living proof that the business of thatching is still a hyper-local one. ‘We’ve had people who want to come along and see their straw being threshed,’ he says. ‘We’ve even had them come and watch it cut in the fields.’
Dominic Meek, a thatcher who has worked with the Watkins for 30 years, says that partnerships between farmer and thatcher can last decades. Now, Mr Watkin’s son, Tobias, who is continuing the family tradition, says almost all the straw is used locally. There are exceptions: ‘Three or four years ago, we took half a ton to Reading,’ he recalls, proving the point.
The Watkins’ 100-acre farm started supplying thatching straw in the 1980s, after the preceding decades brought about a
