Just back from another weekend running a Learn to Scythe course. This week Christiane and I went to teach the folk of Sustainable Edale who want to mow their community orchard. It’s great that word of my scythe workshops had spread from down the road at Bradwell, where I ran a scything course earlier in the year and that my good mate Robin Wood was on the course.
After setting up the scythes we went off to see the orchard to be met by 4 acres of tall tough grasses including sedges and reeds. This kind of vegetation is not the place to first learn the tai-chi scythe movement so we spent the afternoon practising on some shorter, cleaner grass in the village. Then Christiane, Robin, Jojo and I went back over to the orchard in the evening to open up a swath through the grass which was shoulder high in places. With the job well done, we rewarded ourselves with an excellent homemade creme brulee and a glass or two of single malt.
The following day the group were all eager to get over to the orchard and test their mettle in the tougher grass. While we’d been opening it up, I’d identified some patches of easier grass which happily married up with one of the areas of tree planting. With the amazing backdrop of Mam Tor everyone got going and we started to widen out from that first single path. In this kind of situation it’s even more important to use the tai-chi mowing style to do the work rather than just the strength of your arms and folk started to experience this for themselves. With the weight of the grass and the hot sun it was still tiring though so we enjoyed a break and broke early for lunch.
They’ve their work cut out for themselves this year but the condition of the grass should improve with regular cutting and the team were happy that the scythes were the ideal tool to manage the orchard
During the course we stayed in the modern comfort of Robin’s brand-new holiday cottage The Old Police Station with such a brilliant a view of the hills that we had to stay on an extra day to go up Mam Tor and enjoyed looking down from there onto the newly cleared orchard.
This week I got a call asking if I would teach John Craven to scythe for an episode of the BBC’s Countryfile programme. They were filming at Brantwood House and focussing on John Ruskin’s work in training and education. My recent “Learn to Mow with an Austrian Scythe” course tied in the training aspect with the gardens and also gave an excuse to get John to try out something new for the viewers.
Happily, the tv crew brought some southern weather with them and we had the first hot summer day for several weeks. The grass was getting on a bit but still had a last flush of flowers and cut sweetly for camera. Hopefully this will show the mowing as the efficient and pleasant work I promote and teach.
The local press and a surprising number of local photoraphers turned out to watch the races. Some friends from the NW Scythe Group turned up to take part but the majority of the field was composed of the course students who did brilliantly and it was hard to remember that they’d only learned to mow the day before. This was a sprint event over a short distance so the times were quick and the grass was flying.
It wasn’t exactly sunny but we stayed dry for most of the weekend and the students from the Findhorn Foundation and the surrounding community were out tackling some long heavy grass which was lying over from the wind and rain. It cut sweetly though and the sward was clean which made it swift cutting, I was a bit jealous to be busy with teaching and not mowing along with the team.
The second day started with an in-depth discussion and demonstrations of scythe peening. This is a group who will be scything a lot so they wanted to get as much information as possible during the weekend so we covered a lot of ground. For the afternoon Nick wanted to try and tackle the rougher patches of the field that the contractor has left out when he’s been mowing. These had grown up thick with docks, thistles and other weeds tangled into each other and flattened partly by the weather and partly by people walking through. This gave us a chance to look at trimming methods and to demonstrate the toughness of the Austrian scythes.
This year has been difficult for hay-making, to say the least and we had been discussing various racking methods from old agriculture books. Philip, who’d lived on Orkney, demonstrated making a tripod and we filled it with grass to dry. Ideally the grass has at least a day of decent weather to start the drying process before racking so more can be put on each tripod. Nick will have his work cut out for him to harvest his crop but hopefully some of the rest of the group will go back to help him out with it.
Time, once again, for the ‘dawn mowing’ at Brantwood, former home of John Ruskin. Last year, Sally Beamish invited early-rising north west scythers to join her in the beautiful lakeside hay meadow, to mow and prepare for the first outdoor theatre event. A now legendary rustic breakfast followed, and for some, a refreshing dip in the lake.
I was most keen to develop the actual teaching elements of the course. Being able to mow well is important for a teacher but how you put across your information is equally vital for students to benefit. I wanted to show the new teachers the methods I’ve developed through my own teaching for things like setting up the scythe and attaching the blade, sharpening and organising the group in the field. I encouraged them to practise some of these moves so their own demonstrations would become smoother and clearer and we discussed the value of repetition during courses as well as pre-prepared teaching aids.
Also new this year was a section on how to assess beginners and advise them to improve their technique. Christiane and I spent a lot of time beforehand thinking how we could do this and came up with a couple of exercises. For the first, I had some fun preparing a ‘demonstration swath’; thrashing around in the grass to replicate the most common problems of a new student. We then showed how the pattern left in the grass can indicate what is going on and be used as a diagnostic tool. On my own courses this allows me to often understand a students problem even before I see them mowing and makes it easier to give them the best advice to improve. It’s sometimes hard for new teachers to see what is to adjust on someone else’s scythe so to help we gave them a basic set of possibilities that they could work through and then they practised by observing each other.
Simon covered the history of the scythe, blade angles and models and gave an impromptu dancing demonstration with Christiane while the peening was once again covered by Phil. All through the two days of course each of us was able to add things and comment on all the sections and people commented that, beyond being a course for teachers, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn from the four of us.
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