Lovely mowing conditions and the chance to cut a nice clean sward for hay making in the orchard at Sprint Mill. Peaceful and sustainable, it’s such a nice way to spend the morning and everyone can work at their own pace.
The meadows are full of activity this week as farmers take advantage of the incredible weather to make hay while the sun shines. At Sprint Mill it’s no different except that we are making hay by hand.
On Monday I went with Ian and Kirsten to cut the orchard grass. I had only found out about the plan earlier that morning so we didn’t start until 9am and the heat was already mounting. What a pleasure though to mow the orchard on a sunny day with good company. Ian is a bit of an old hand with the scythe while Kirsten is a complete beginner but made steady progress and a neat job. I took the opportunity to open up and enjoy cutting long wide swaths through the lush grass.
Ian had to leave early but Kirsten and I quickly had a quarter-acre of grass cut then started to spread out the windrows to dry after a short break. By then it was definitely time for lunch in the shade followed by another session of turning and then rowing up the grass back into windrows as the evening came.
The rest of the orchard was cut yesterday, a trickier patch where the trees are planted closer together but ideal conditions for the scythe. Mondays grass was spread out again and the first of it baled with our hand baler. It’s hot work but very pleasurable to do together and the results are beautiful small bales of mixed meadow grass.
Edward, who owns Sprint Mill where I run my scythe courses in Cumbria, is addicted to his 40cm Schroeckenfux scythe blade which he uses for trimming and tidying around the vegetable beds. It gets a lot of use and not always just by him so the other day the blade was looking a bit tired and I thought I’d peen it as a favour.
I started off by washing the blade and cleaning off the rust and dirt from the edge with an abrasive block. There were a couple of minor bits of damage on the edge so I simply filed these out using a chainsaw file to leave a smooth dip.
Then onto the peening jig. Although I’m comfortable and experienced at freehand peening with a hammer and anvil, I like to use the jig from time to time. As a teacher I think it’s important to maintain my familiarity with the methods I’m teaching and also to experiment with the tools to see what they are capable of. The peening jig is often seen as a second-class alternative to the peening anvil but you can achieve excellent results with it if you know what you’re doing and with little chance of damaging the scythe.
For this blade and the work it does I simply made one pass with each of the two caps which was quickly done on such a short blade. The jig follows the dips from the filing and, did a lovely job of creating a smooth edge.
After the jig, the scythe edge is blunt from where it’s been riding along the guide post. This requires sharpening with a succession of stones so my scythe kits now contain a full complement of whetstones to make this easier to achieve, ready for more garden paths.
If you’re interested in learning to peen your scythe, book a place on my Learn to Peen course in September. Whatever your level I can take you through the first worrying moments of hitting your scythe with a hammer, introduce you to freehand peening or improve your technique to achieve the edge you want.
I’m working my way through a pile of crooked branches that I collected earlier in the year and carving them into serving spoons and ladles. You can predict to some extent how a green wood crook will split but you’re never completely sure and it’s exciting to split them open and find the spoon inside. Carving crooks day after day, I’m getting a lot of fluidity and strong shapes into these spoons, each one completely unique with it’s own character and personality.
Here’s the first of them.
Cherry, 295mm long
Damson, 270mm long
Call that rain? Nowt but a bit of dampness in the air..
Thankfully it was nothing but showers and the seven students who turned up for their Learn to Scythe course had a great day. That was partly thanks to the lovely bit of Sprint Mill meadow which had been earmarked for the course – I was quite jealous to not be mowing it with them.
With us on the course was Akii from Japan who explained that the scythe is completely unknown there. Farming of cattle and sheep is relatively new there so there was never a need to make hay for livestock and hence the scythe wasn’t needed. He and Angela have a small meadow in Scotland and took home on of my scythe kits to manage that so possibly he’ll spread the word back in Japan too.
I also brought out my ‘sharpening stool’ so Angela didn’t have to kneel down but still got the benefits of my improved sharpening method.
With the clean sward everyone was getting a nice clean cut and mowing very well. Here’s Steve in action, great use of his legs and getting a full swath.
Altogether another fun day proving the benefits of the scythe. Hopefully we’ll have better weather for the next day or two and the grass will be made into hay.
Well, Blythe of course – or even blithe, come to think of it.
It’s gloriously sunny in Kendal and the longest day so no excuse for not going out to cut some grass. Actually, my excuse is that I’ve got a little job mowing a wildflower bank in one of the gardens here which is an absolute pleasure to do, especially since it’s just a short walk from home.
The owner contacted me last year after getting my details from the Cumbria Wildlife Trust and hoped I could cope with their bank which is too steep for the lawnmower and awkward with other tools but perfect for the scythe. Working on a slope like this I lowered both handgrips for more comfort and mowed at an angle to the gradient – you can see the direction from my windrows. Twenty minutes to mow and thirty-five to clear away the grass but why hurry when the work is this much fun?
My friend Susan brought me back pictures of scythes from her recent visit to the newly revamped Tate Britain. Among them was The Mower by Sir Hamo Thornycroft. Made at the end of the 1800s it depicts a British labourer in his workng clothes with his English, straight-shafted scythe and whetstone carried on his belt. Trying to imagine myself working with his scythe (while Susan commented on the similarities of my and his hats) something didn’t seem quite right..
Take a look at the image from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where they have the life-size bronze and suddenly you see that the snath is actually curved slightly though in the opposite sense from most English snaths, ie with the top of it curving upwards. I’m still tryling to understand it and the positioning of the nibs as the lower one seems turned far too downwards but I wonder if it’s all artistic licence on Mr Thorncroft’s part. A trip to Liverpool may be in order..
I was back to Bradwell Community Orchard in Derbyshire last weekend with another beginners scythe course. I taught a group there last year and it was great to see Ellie, Andy and Sally again, mowing well but keen to have a refresher. I also enjoyed seeing how much the grass had improved after being cut last year, much less rank and thatching.
Also on the course were Sarah from Sheffield Wildlife Trust and Alex from Eastern Moors who are both interested to start using the scythe to manage areas for conservation. I’ve taught several people from different Wildlife Trust groups now, glad to see they are taking it on board. Everyone made great progress and we cleared about half the orchard. Jeremy lives just in the next village so took his scythe kit home by bike to use in his own orchard.
There were a few short showers but mostly only long enough to put your waterproofs on before it stopped again. At lunchtime we sat in the sun and Andy treated us to a reading of the poem from the ‘Notes on the use of the Austrian scythe’ booklet which comes with my beginners scythe kit.
Taxman by George MacKay Brown
Seven scythes leaned against the wall.
Beard upon golden beard
The last barley load
Swayed through the yard
The girls uncorked the ale.
Fiddle and feet moved together
Then between stubble and heather
A horseman rode.
After the course I went with Sally to her own patch of ground as she’d been struggling with cutting the coarse grass and tussocks there and had managed to bend a couple of the D-rings out of shape. Her tussocks weren’t as bad as at St Nicholas Fields so I was quickly able to show her how to deal with it with less energy or potential for damage to the scythe.
I was staying with my mate Robin Wood down the road in Edale. On Sunday we got a couple of scythe kits together and took them over to Edale Orchard. The grass there too is much sweeter than when I taught there last year and full of buttercups at the moment. A few more hours of pleasant mowing in good company, what a treat for my day off.
A midweek course this week at St Nicholas Fields in York, a nature reserve and sustainability centre hidden in the city. Their centre manager Jonathan came and took part in last years Scythe Teachers’ course in Somerset but decided to call me in to train some of the other staff as well as keen locals.
The centre is a former landfill site which was capped with clay in 1993 and, as a result, their meadows are still establishing. Part of the land is dominated by large tussocks of tough grass which had been defeating the volunteers and making them wonder if they’d have to resort to mechanical means.
Although I was confident we could cut the tussocks, it’s not the place to start learning to scythe so after setting up we spent the morning with some more pleasant mowing in a lighter meadow. This gave folk the chance to learn and develop the easy ‘tai-chi’ style of mowing that I teach in some long but softer grasses. There were a couple of left-handers this time which gives me chance to develop my teaching too. If you’re cutting in a mowing team then everyone scythes right-handed but when sharpening it’s usually better to switch to your dominant hand. After I’d showed everyone the principles I worked more with Jennifer to see what worked best I’ll then refine these methods for use on future courses.
I saved the tussocks for the afternoon once everyone had got comfortable with the idea of slicing through the grass with the scythe. Trying to chop your way through such tough vegetation is only going to tire you out with the risk of damaging the scythe too whereas, with a simple adjustment to how you hold and use the scythe, they become much easier and a few people even said it was their favourite part of the day.
Although not officially on the course, I also sneaked in a very quick mowing lesson for Ivana who had organised the day and kindly hosted me in York the night before. A native Czech, she’d told me about her father scything and making hay when she was a child but had never been allowed to mow herself and was keen to try. My hunch that all those years of watching and absorbing the techniques paid off and she took to it like a natural.
