A month of mowing

Summer is here and July was filled with the sounds of scythes mowing their way through the northwest as I taught 50 people how to mow over the course of the month.
These were all courses organised by conservation groups who are running hay meadow projects in Cumbria, Yorkshire and Lancashire including Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Forest of Bowland AONB, Lancaster Castle, Yorkshire Dales National Park and North Pennines AONB. I’ve been teaching for some of them for a few years now and together we’re building a huge team of mowers here in the NW.
Some highlights for me were having Olivia Keith come to the Lancashire Coronation Meadow at Slaidburn to draw wonderful dynamic artworks of the scything, glorious sunshine (and one day of rain!) all month, working with Krishan who came and learned to scythe in spite of being blind, discovering  more of the beautiful landscape and, of course, meeting so many interesting and friendly people.
[gigya src=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649″ width=”550″ flashvars=”offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=/photos/66173272@N02/sets/72157645807403657/show/&page_show_back_url=/photos/66173272@N02/sets/72157645807403657/&set_id=72157645807403657&jump_to=” allowFullScreen=”true” ]