Thatch Your Own Roof

Woven reeds provide much more than Old-World charm to modern-day sheds, outbuildings, and homes.

Nathaniel B. Munro

My boots crunch through the first heavy snowfall of the year. I make my way through a woodland path and into the tidal marsh, a sharpened sickle in hand. Stems of reed plants lay bare, billowing in the blustery breeze. It’s reed-harvesting season once more. I collect a series of stalks in my left arm as I use my right to swipe the sickle through the reeds. The cuttings create piles of reeds, called “fathoms,” about as large as I can reach my arms around to carry. Each fathom yields three or four bundles, or “yealms,” that I’ll use in the spring and summer months to thatch our cottage’s roof. My infatuation with thatch started during a backpacking trip across Britain and Ireland with my now-wife, Sara, in 2014. We…

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Grit (Digital) - 1 Issue, March/April 2025

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