A whole weekend of carving wooden spoons, who’s going to go to that? Well, 150 of us did turn up to Edale for Spoonfest 2012 which was a hugely fun couple of days which went by all too quickly.
Driving down into Edale valley on friday lunchtime Christiane and I could see the giant marquee set up and our anticipation started to mount. We spotted a few friends straight away and the spoon talk started. I’d arrived early to meet up with Jarrod Stone Dahl, a brilliant craftsman from the US who I’ve been talking with over the internet about birch bark and spoons since last winter. It was a pleasure to meet such a lovely guy and we all took off to find spruce roots for his knife sheath workshop. Armed with a trowel and a plank of wood we dug around in the woods with Jarrod explaining what he looks for and discussing climate, lifestyles, farming, ginger beer and whatever.
By the time we got back, set up the tent and helped our Rob and Barn with some jobs time was getting on and I was getting itchy to make a spoon. We just had time for me to axe a blank for Christiane before Jojo called ‘Tools Down!’ and the bar opened. We grabbed a drink and took our seats for a brilliant talk by Swedish spooncarver Jogge Sundqvist about the ‘Four Walls of Craft’ which I really enjoyed. Then time for more spoon chat and an early-ish night ahead of the main event.
The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur. None of us had expected the demand for spoon courses with the queue stretching the length of the marquee and back so we all added extra sessions to try and get everyone into their chosen session. I was running a workshop called ‘Improve your spoons’, focusing on the design element of wooden spoons as well as demonstrating my carving process. It was a lot to fit into the 1½ hr sessions which inevitably overran and there was hardly time to take a breath but I was feeding off the buzz and enthusiasm which was everywhere.
To be honest, I was fairly nervous about running this workshop, wondering if anyone would want to hear me tell them what makes a good spoon and how to make it. Fortunately, Jogge had given a demonstration of carving first thing in the morning and I was pleased to see that he followed basically the same method as me and that his ‘Four walls’ talk had touched on the importance of design and learning from tradition. Emboldened by this I set-to and said my thing. Thanks to all the folk who later gave me their kind feedback including the chap who was inspired to use one of his spoons for the first time ever and the lady who said she’d looked at her work with new eyes and thrown three of her earlier attempts on the fire!
While I was teaching, Christiane took the bark sheath making workshop with Jarrod and also did Robin’s beginner’s carving class. I managed to get a break on Saturday to be part of an incised engraving workshop run by Jan Harm ter Brugge. His work was brilliant and I was pleased to see that he simply used the tip of his carving knife to make the engravings. I’ll be working on developing this for my own work in the future.
And so it continued for two days with so many interesting people, ideas and discussions that this could turn into a very long blog post. Have a look at Robin’s Greenwood-carving blog for more images from the weekend and links to other folk’s blogs with their experience. It was all over far too quickly and I’m still taking it all in, thinking over ideas and making spoons since we came back. Huge thanks to Rob and Barn for putting it all together and everyone who made it a special weekend indeed.
A look behind the camera during the filming at Brantwood House when I was asked to teach John Craven to scythe for BBC tv’s Countryfile. I would have preferred to give John some instruction in advance but they wanted it ‘live’ for the programme and, with a bit of help, he got a few good strokes. This was all complicated by having to repeat the lesson for different camera angles, trying to remember what I’d said first time while John pretended to take his first cut again.
My one-day beginner’s scythe courses take place near Kendal in the Lake District where you will spend a day learning to how to use the scythe in a safe and efficient way. Courses cost £60 and include the use of my scythe kits which are available to buy on the day.
After teaching so many beginners to scythe this summer, it was great to see some of them back for my Improver’s course at the weekend. Like any skill, learning to scythe well takes time and practise and it helps to have someone check your progress. For this course I organised few different mowing situations to cover different skills.
We started in the orchard with a clean sward which was short but lying over from the weather. The mowing was deceptively tricky but gave me an opportunity to watch people and work with them on their ‘tai-chi’ style encouraging them to stand up straighter or make more use of their legs while mowing. In between mowing, I gave some help with sharpening and moved people on from the kneeling technique I teach to beginners. Being in the orchard also meant we could also do some trimming around the trees, mulching them at the same time without damaging the tree.
After lunch came my favourite part, a steep bank covered with tall weeds including hogweed, rosebay willowherb and raspberry canes. It’s the sort of thing that looks like awful work but with a scythe and good technique is actually fairly easy, efficient and lots of fun. Adjusting their grip on the scythe and explaining how to cut thicker material meant that the group could work through the weeds without hacking and risking damage to the blades.
Sunday started with a few of us spreading out the grass for hay before the peening course. This was the usual raucus affair with seven people hammering away to shape their blades. These days are important for me to teach good technique, give people the confidence to peen and take away the fear of damaging the blades. Ali and Ian had some damage to their blades so I took them through the process of filing out the nicks and using the flat anvil to peen out metal into the gap. Once peened, we sharpened the blades with a succession of whetstones before taking them back out to try on the meadow.
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 
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 
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.
-
Recent Posts
Categories
-
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy