1st International Peening Day

In years to come thousands will claim to have been there but in truth a select bunch of six scythe folk turned up to Sprint Mill in Cumbria for International Peening Day. Huge numbers was never my objective and our group spent a really enjoyable and productive day together. Though it wasn’t a true teaching event I was of course happy to answer questions and help everyone out with their blades.  There’s a lot to learn in peening; it’s a real skill which takes time, practice and timely advice to learn. It’s great to see people who’ve been on my ‘Learn to mow’ courses and are still mowing and I want them to continue enjoying it.
During the day we also took some time out to try a variety of push mowers, including a new Al-Ko 380HM Soft Touch Lawn Mower which Rochford Garden Machinery have kindly supplied for me to test over the year as a complementary tool to the scythe.
Around Europe people were peening their scythes including the UK’s Scythe Association chairman, Richard Brown who managed to peen his blade while waiting to go sailing, Michael (Stibs) Stibane in Germany and Christiane Lechner in Austria who practised peening with an original ‘Triplex’ machine. I was especially pleased to hear from Adolf Staufer, one of my peening tutors, who sent a photo from Austria of himself peening among the early cowslips.

Chris Riley of Wiltshire, UK wrote:

Hi Steve
Thank you so much for the incentive to get peening today. My mainstay grass and ditch blades are now ready for action.

While Peter Vido, of Scythe Connection in Canada wrote:

I applaud your instigation of the ‘Global Day of Peening’ and in solidarity, I’ll spend most of April 1 peening scythe blades. I presently have well upwards of 100 blades to ready so it will be a righteous excuse to ‘keep the hammer at the anvil’.

See you there next year!