THEY don't make 'em like they used to. And this well-worn lament is never more true than when it applies to country crafts. The former army of skilled men and women bodging, weaving and whittling has dwindled to a handful keeping the traditions alive.

John Boakes, who lives near Thirsk, has done his bit to ensure these wonderful skills survive. He has written a series of books as part of publisher Smith Settle's Making A... series.

With informative text and illustrated by many of John's own photographs, they give the reader the basics on how to make a barrel; a laid hedge; a milking stool; a rag rug; a shepherd's crook and a woven hurdle.

John has written many articles for magazines about history and nature, and this seemed the perfect project for him. Born on a farm, he has always lived in the country.

"I'm 55. I can remember lots of these things as they used to be," he says.

"We lived on a farm. I remember all the crafts they used to do: hedging, ditching - that's all gone now. It's all done by machinery."

One of his most vivid childhood memories is seeing his mother making a rag rug.

"In the old days it used to take you a winter just to finish one rug.

"It used to be a family venture. Father would make the frame that held the rags. The children would cut up the strips and the wife would do the actual making.

"It was a family occupation in the days before wireless and television."

They are inexpensive to make but "very hard-wearing. What they used to do was make a new rug every year.

"That used to go in the best room, and all the other rugs were demoted by a room. They used to end up outside as a door mat, or in the outside loo."

Rag rugs can last 30 or 40 years, he says. Every one is unique, but the designs are often similar.

"A lot of the patterning is traditional. In the old days there always used to be a bit of red in them.

"Red was an uncommon colour in materials in those days. The colours were workaday - greys and browns. The red was always put in by the man."

Rag rug making was also a social event. Women often got together to create a rag rug, known as a proddie or peggie rug in Yorkshire, and they would include local scenes in the pattern. These were then sold to raise funds for the church, or the district poor.

Hedge-laying was another common sight in the country not so many years ago. Blackthorn and hawthorn were the first choice for a farm hedge. "They're very sturdy," says John. "They used to use many thousands of them on the farm."

A family specialising in the skill would serve the area they lived in. Each hedge layer had his own style of working, although the finished product is always the same: a thick and impenetrable barrier.

Hurdle-making is a similar skill. There are two types, according to John's book: the more lightweight wattle hurdle of the south and the Northern bar type which looks like a portable five-bar gate. It was known as a riven hurdle.

Today hedge-laying and hurdle-weaving are rarely seen on farms. The Prince's Trust has helped young apprentices learn these crafts and several others. The hurdles are often sold in garden centres.

It is a shame these skills have no place in modern farming because they are very environmentally friendly. "It's all natural fibres, natural ways," says John.

Skilled woodworkers would also be adept at making two other items in John's series: shepherd's crooks and milking stools. Originally, stick-making was a small cottage industry which began with people making sticks as they needed them. As their friends asked to have one made, their popularity grew and the best stick-makers were soon kept busy.

Today, there are plenty of stick-makers selling their products at country shows. Often the crook is decorated with a carved sheep's head or other motif.

"Very few of the utilitarian ones are made now. Many shepherds have got metal ones."

If you want to make a milking stool, you must become a bodger. Bodging has been practised in the ancient beech woods of Britain for centuries.

"The bodger was a man who worked in the woods using freshly-cut unseasoned wood to produce all manner of household wares," John writes.

"The tools the bodger used were few and commonplace, including an axe and a cross-cut saw for felling the timber, although in recent years these have been replaced by a modern chainsaw.

"A beetle and froe were used for cleaving the sawn pieces, then a hatchet and drawshave were needed to roughly shape the lengths of wood; finally a pole lathe and various turning chisels finished off the work."

Coopers used to command good wages for their work, reflecting the training and skill involved in making a barrel. In the 1920s, a skilled cooper would earn around £5 10s a week, nearly twice the average wage.

The advent of metal casks has all but finished the craft of coopering, except at Theakston's brewery in Masham. Theakston's cooper Jonathan Manby gave John a tutorial for his book.

He was impressed. "All the components have got to be hand made," he said. "You've got the staves, you've got the metal bands - they do it all."

And at the end, everything must fit perfectly and be watertight, or - disaster - wasted beer.

John believes there is now an interest in all these old crafts because they symbolise a slower, more nature-oriented way of life.

"What I was hoping to show is that in the past we all had more time," he says.

"We had more time to learn these things. In some cases, like coppicing for hurdles, we had time to wait for the trees to grow, over five or seven years.

"There was a slower pace of life. It wasn't just go to a shop and buy something. You had to wait for it."

Making A Barrel, and the other titles in the series by John Boakes, are each published by Smith Settle, price £2.95

Updated: 11:00 Monday, May 06, 2002