IT's the oldest profession in the world — older even than a more notorious claimant to the title — say thatchers.

Master Thatcher Chris Robinson from Kilkhampton near Bude said: "Thatching is the oldest form of roofing known to man. People have always wanted to be dry before anything else."

The thatching story began when early man gave up hunting and settled down to farm, having had enough of sleeping rough on the hunt. The first thing he wanted was a dry, warm home.

Chris, a thatcher for about 30 years, said: "Then there was plenty of long dry grass about that was ideally suited for roofing. So on it went and here we are now."

Nowadays it is a more specialised and complex job, but the materials are effectively the same as when nomadic hunters decided to roof their stone hut.

In fields around South Molton and near Chittlehampton wheat reed is harvested every summer.

Chris said: "Wheat reed is shorter, but grown locally and commonly used in Devon. Sometimes we use water reed, which is longer and grown in rivers and lakes, but we have to import it, mainly from Turkey, which makes it quite expensive. Water reed is grown in Norfolk, but most of it is used there."

The wheat reed is grown by farmers like John Becklake, of Lower Radley Farm, near Bishops Nympton, who has been planting and harvesting wheat reed all his life, learning how from his father.

This year he planted about 350 acres of wheat around South Molton.

He said: "I plough and plant the seeds in October and within two weeks it sprouts. Then it goes dormant for the winter."

Come spring and the warmer weather of March and April the shoots start growing and by mid-July the wheat is anything up to two feet tall; harvesting height.

Mr Becklake said: "The weather can do what it likes now as far as I am concerned as the wheat is in. This year hasn't been too bad but the last three years have been a nightmare, lots of rain, really bad."

Continual rain blights the wheat reed, discolouring and weakening it, making it worse than useless for thatchers.

Chris, who gained the Duchy of Cornwall Award for his thatching in 2008, said: "What I am looking for is reed a yellow golden colour, hard and approximately the same length. Stained reed is no good really, as it is probably weaker and may have mould which will spread through the thatch."

Harvesting is done by a mix of local men and Poles — the East Europeans have been working the harvest for years, one now one even supports South Molton Rugby Club and follows the club's fortunes when he returns to Poland.

The wheat is cut by machine, and then the work becomes back breaking, as workers cross the fields bending, picking up and stacking the wheat in a rhythm that hasn't changed for hundreds of years.

One of the 22 strong harvesting team, Craig Kingdom, said: "It has to be piled in stooks by hand to dry and this lets the wheat grain and stems harden."

And although this year has seen a reasonable to good harvest, Craig agrees with Mr Becklake, the last three years have been terrible, and suggests a reason first mooted by French farmers in 2008 when their crops were devastated by unseasonal weather.

Craig, a self-employed contractor from South Molton, said: "Apparently there have been 13 moons a year in the last three years, which affects the tides, and apparently the tides influence the weather. The last three summers have been wet and so there has been a poor harvest."

Once dry, the wheat is taken to a barn and fed into a machine bolted together by John Becklake.

He said: "The wheat is fed in and the grain is shaken off, graded, and depending on its quality it either goes for human consumption, or for animal fodder.

"Straw and chaff stripped from the wheat is baled up and used for animal bedding and the wheat stem is bundled and goes for thatching."

The bundles are then bundled again into a bigger bundle and delivered wherever the thatchers are working.

Chris, who worked for about four years thatching in Oxfordshire before returning to Bude, said: "We then have to hump it up on the roof by hand and start laying it in overlapping layers called courses."

On an average two-up, two-down house four to five tons of reed will be laid, meaning Chris carries up thousands of bundles.

He joked: "It's bloody hard work, and I tell you if I won the lottery, that would be me done."

Using a thatchers drift, a tool like a large, square-ridged mallet, the reed is thumped and tapped into place and forced up tight to reed already laid.

It is then held there with a two-feet-long metal bar, called a needle.

Wooden hand-made staples, called spars in Devon and spears in Cornwall, are driven through the reed, the staple points visible in the roofs loft, to hold it in place.

Chris, who got the thatching bug after talking with an old craftsman in a Rackenford pub while on a school rugby tour, said: "We make them ourselves from locally grown coppiced hazel."

Once the ridge — the apex — of the roof is reached more wheat is layered over the already foot-thick thatch to create a thicker, water-tight seal, called a wrap over. That, for Chris, is the job done.

Chris, whose first taste of thatching was working during school holidays for the craftsman he met in the pub, said: "All in all its a dusty old job, and years ago there would have been a barrel of cider on the ground and one on the roof for the thatchers to wash away the dust.

"The old boy was forever disappearing to 'get something', as he would say.

"You also develop a permanent squint from trying to keep chaff and the like out of your eyes, and it's hard on the knees, but it's a good way to earn a living and a good thatcher can take a real, honest pride in his work."