On Sunday I ran the first of my mowing courses at Sprint Mill near Kendal in Cumbria. The course is designed to introduce people to mowing with a scythe or provide a refresher for those who would like to be reminded of the techniques and improve their skills.
After weeks of unsettled weather and heavy showers, we were fortunate in having a completely clear, sunny day. I arrived early to mow a space to start in the orchard on my own in the early morning. I had time to relax and calm myself before the day, enjoying the quiet and the gentle exercise of mowing.
Seven people came along to learn, some complete beginners and some with a bit of experience, with a range of ages and backgrounds.
The first session of the day is to introduce everyone to the components of the scythe and go through the process of setting up the snath and blade. The scythe should be a very comfortable and ‘body-friendly’ tool to use, not putting strain on muscles or joints and to achieve this it is important to understand how to adjust it for your own build and technique.
After a short break we walked over to the orchard, passing by two beautiful traditionally-managed meadows full of red clover, yellow rattle and a multitude of grass species. As we walked we discussed the idea of having an expert teach a day on meadow plant identification and management, something that I’ll continue to look into.
The orchard is a perfect setting for a course, the grass is in good condition and the ground flat enough for beginners to work with but there are fences, other obstacles and of course, the trees themselves to work with. This is the kind of situation that many people are mowing in for themselves and it gives them more learning opportunites than an empty meadow.
I always take a few minutes to explain the principles of the ‘tai chi’ movement and lead people through a simple exercise to loosen their body and feel that motion. I get each person to again check their setup and then guide them into mowing. The grass was in much better condition than when the NW group mowed it last autumn and soon everyone was busy mowing. At this point I move around the group, offering advice, answering questions, making suggestion on changes to the set-up based on their technique but at the same time letting each person have time to learn for themselves. We also worked together on sharpening in the field using whetstones and two different methods.
After lunch we returned for more mowing and to collect up the cut grass. Our hosts, Edward and Romola decided that the best solution for the grass would be a compost heap rather than spreading it out to dry. Half the group continued to mow while the other half raked and forked a huge amount of grass into a large springy pile, swapping roles after a short time.
Rhuari had an English pattern scythe with him which he had been trying to use before the course. Although in the morning he had learned to set up and use one of the Austrian scythes and been impressed by its lightness and efficiency, he was keen to try his own with his new knowledge of mowing technique. We checked the setup and tried it out but it was immediately obvious that the blade needed a lot of work in sharpening. He was mowing very well with the Austrian scythe so I’ll be interested to see how he gets on with the English variation in the future.
With time pressing on, we returned to the Mill for a demonstration of peening using the jig. There is a lot to fit into a course like this and, through talking to people who’ve been on introductory courses, I’ve decided that to also teach peening means having less time for mowing and overloads folk so the information doesn’t stick. I added in an impromptu demonstration of repairing a blade using a file and the peening anvil to fix a small dent in Tony’s blade.
Everyone seemed to have had a great day. They were impressed enough that, of those that hadn’t already, lots of folk bought a scythe kit to continue their mowing and were invited to join the events organised by the NW group.
The next course will be 2nd July also at Sprint Mill. To book a place email Steve Tomlin.
Each tutor went to his place and after the introduction I started with the health and safety rules and the names for the parts of the blade and snath. Since we don’t ask for the height of the participants in advance, it was a challenge to set them up with the right size of snath. Everybody got the same blade – a 75cm scythe designed for the Sensenverein. People were surprised how long we took to set everything up and work on the movement and you could see that some were getting a bit impatient because they were so eager to mow grass.
Finally we started mowing and with that they understood why we took all the time to prepare and practise without grass. It needed some reminders: keep the blade on the ground, move towards the grass instead of leaning to it and the most important sentence “watch the person in front of you!”
After some time of mowing, correcting, stopping people because they mowed too close to each other, we stopped for sharpening. This bit of the teaching is for me the most challenging part – you can only explain and show them so much, to explain the angles, the stone has to be at and do it yourself ….. And people tended to do it too fast because they had seen old mowers doing it really fast. They were surprised how slow I sharpen but I don’t see any reason to hurry. I’d rather have a sharp edge than make it blunt because of rushing. The best teacher for sharpness is the blade itself. If you went over the cutting edge with the stone or didn’t do anything to it because of the wrong angle you will definitely find out that it is worse than before you stopped to whet your blade.
People were so happy with mowing that I almost had to force them to have a short break for some breakfast – I was happy about it since I hadn’t had time for it with the start at 7am. But to start that early was good because at 10:30 it was almost to hot to continue mowing. We ran out of grass but found a slope to mow, which people liked because this is what some of them have at home. Together we worked out how to mow it – start at the bottom and mow kind of downhill but still along the slope. You want to mow the grass downhill, so not to carry the weight of the grass uphill. This was the time when we used the wedges and I suggested to them that they don’t need to hold on to the handgrips the normal way. Instead they can switch to holding the snath at the stem or with the right hand on the “Verlängerung” (extension piece) instead of at the handgrip. I encouraged them to play with how it is most comfortable to hold the scythe and mow on a slope.
Finally I called an end to mowing – people had started to mow the lawn! So we dismounted the blades, washed and dryed them. I had prepared blades especially for peening. They had little cracks and bent over edges. I showed them how to repair it and how to get the blade ready for peening. For me a very important thing is to have a shiny blade for peening. If it has rust or dirt on it, this would have a negative effect on the jig and also on the edge of the blade. I showed them how to use the peening jig and the participants had some time to practise on it. But soon we were called for lunch and had to stop. For me a 5 hours course is too short to have enough time to explain and give enough time for practise while you watch and help. But people went away happy to have had the chance to learn how to use such an efficient tool.
Outside his workshop at the beginning of the Pennine Way stands his small forge. The first stage is to heat each tool to a dull red and then quench it in oil or water to cool the steel as quickly as possible, hardening it. We started out with a couple of cheap kindling axes to check the method and decide on whether to use oil or water for the quench. Water gives a faster quench but with larger tools like axes, this can sometimes lead to stresses being formed in the metal.
Robin was obviously enjoying himself as he took the first axe head, glowing red out of the forge and plunged it into a large jug of cooking oil which promply burst into flames. After testing with the file we decided a water quench was needed which gave us the proper hardness without any problems.
We quickly shined up the surfaces of all the tools on Rob’s belt grinder and then took them back to his house and popped them in the oven at 250C, a good tempering temperature for woodworking tools. Part way through we added potatoes for a simple supper.
In lots of ways this was the hardest stage of the process to restore my tools and I was glad to benefit from Robin’s experience.
On Sunday I met with other members of the Coppice Association NW (CANW) at Moss and Heights Spring Woods for a day of peeling oak bark.
I selected a good clean looking trunk and scored the bark with a knife to remove a small length of bark. Initially I could see it splitting inside and thought I was damaging the bark but this was actually the thicker cambium layer which came away from the wood too. It was then possible to peel the bark away from the cambium though a lot of care was needed at this stage not to damage the bark. We’re a curious bunch and my peeling soon attracted a lot of interest when people saw the sheets of bark and felt how soft but strong they felt, like thin leather. A couple more members had a go and we went away with bark promising to share our experiences of working with it.
By the end of the day we had a several bundles of bark for drying and piles of naked looking oak poles. These can be used for rustic garden furniture making, firewood or charcoal; the secret of making coppice work economical is to use every part of the tree, something that Bill Hogarth was a master of.
In one particularly pleasing section, Mr Hopfen travels to the mountain areas around Sidiken on the Iranian-Turkish border to demonstrate the scythe. Unfortunately, ‘the farmers were so eager to obtain the few implement samples which the expert had taken to the mountains, that demonstrations had to be discontinued after only a few days as he had no implements left’! Similar problems were encountered in supply in Kirkuk so Mr Hopfen instructed local carpenters in the making of snaths and cradles.
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