I would deny being a tool geek but I do like old tools, know a bit about them and am constantly amazed by the ingenuity of folk who worked by hand in designing efficient tools for specific jobs.
This is a sheaf fork. Once your wheat is cut and lying beautifully straight in it’s windrows then making sheaves is just a matter of scooping it up with the fork so it collects in front of the two little fingers. Job done, all you need is a band to tie it up.
Simple, effective & brilliant. Where can I get one?
At least 15 enthusiastic scythers enjoyed an excellent weekend of scything at Hay Bridge Nature Reserve. Many thanks to Paul for getting it together, Keith and Helen for hosting us (beer and barbeque particularly appreciated) and Steve for giving impromptu lessons in filing out snags in blades.
The Reserve provided varied scything (flat creeping grass, tussocks, bracken, and briars), obstacle avoidance (stones, wire fences, adders) and chances to improve techniques for cutting on slopes. The pub (White Hart at Bouth) provided good food and beer on Friday night for a hilarious “ice-breaking” session. The weekend also coincided with an open day at the old Victorian farm (Old Hall Farm, Bouth) and on Sunday afternoon a group of our scythers went down and experimented with scything wheat (including sheafing and stooking) using Steve’s cradles – with apologies for the breakages Steve!
Hopefully the first of many good weekends!
One thing with mowing is that it’s really difficult to take a photo of yourself so more thanks to the Webster family for the pictures they took during their vintage weekend in August.
Here’s the FAO cradle in action, showing how it pushes the wheat over into a row as it’s cut. Yes, I am wearing lederhosen. Austrian dress for an Austrian scythe – sometimes you’ve got to make the effort.
Clear blue skies, old tractors and a field full of wheat greeted me for my mowing demonstration over the bank holiday weekend.
Margaret & Andrew Webster, with their family and David White had done a fantastic job of putting together the event, held in Aughton in Lancashire. I’m not really a tractor fan and know pretty much nothing about that world but I couldn’t have hoped to spend the weekend with a friendlier group of folk. Various machines looking more or less like tractors as we know them took to the field ploughing, harrowing, ditching or simply cruising at an awesome 2mph. All of them were working, most of them were immaculate and a lot of them sounded better than my peugeot.
Bow cradle
My involvement was to mow their wheat by scythe as part of ‘Harvesting through the ages’. I was shown the two 1-acre blocks and told I could experiment and play as much as I wanted. First off, I worked with a scythe fitted with a simple willow bow, a peasant’s cradle that I’ve seen in many old photos. The wheat was easy to cut and not as heavy as I expected with the bonus of making a satisfying sound as it was cut. The bow certainly did it’s job of pushing the stems over into a row though they often got caught in the web which made them messy.
FAO cradle
On Monday I switched to the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) cradle, a model that was designed for use in the developing world after WWII. More difficult to make, it works basically on the same principle, pushing the stems over as you cut. The wire mesh prevented the stems getting tangled and improved things a lot. I’d build this onto an Eastern-Europe style scythe with a straight shaft and single handgrip, another first for me. Once I found my rhythm I could happily cut a 4ft swath, tipping my right hand at the end of each stroke to drop the wheat into a row. With the sun beating down I felt like I was really harvesting.
Plenty of people wanted to stop me for a chat and provide an opportunity for a rest. Lots of them could remember their father using a scythe to cut around the edge of a wheat field to make space for the reaper but none had actually done it themselves. About a dozen chaps showed me how to use the wheat itself to tie up a sheaf, in two different ways. At least they would have done if it hadn’t been so short and we’d been cutting it green when it’s not so brittle. Their memories were all interesting, I never tired of hearing them.
It was a great weekend and a fantastic opportunity to learn. Many thanks to the Webster’s for inviting me and their hospitality.
The first Cumbrian Scythe Festival back in July was probably held on the wettest weekend of the year, but it still managed to attract nearly twenty people for Saturday’s beginners’ scything course. Quite apart from imparting the joys of mowing to each of them in turn, it was also a great place to bring together people from the region (and in some cases beyond) who were interested in rural crafts. Many of those who arrived were farmers, smallholders and rural craftspeople, from woodworkers to wallers. Most of them have now caught the scythe bug. As you do.
We’ve now come up with a way of scratching this itch, at least for now. One of our pupils at the festival is also a volunteer at the Haybridge Nature Reserve, in south Cumbria. Haybridge is 200 acres of beautiful land, much of it grass, bracken and scrub, and its manager is keen for it to be managed in traditional ways, and without fossil fuels as far as possible.
Which is where we come in. A small group of us have been mowing grass and bracken at Haybridge over the last month, and now we’re opening the reserve up for a weekend to other mowers.
There are several fields, meadows and clearings that need mowing. The ground is a mixture of grass, bracken, rushes, wild flowers and the odd molehill. There are slopes, tussocks, hummocks, flat grasslands, wildflower meadows, wet bits, dry bits, saplings to avoid, verges to trim … It is, in other words, a multi-dimensional mowing challenge, which will give you a chance to practice cutting pretty much everything you could ever want to cut!
The Great Cumbrian Scything Challenge will take place on the weekend of 11th and 12th September. It’ll be a relaxed affair: just turn up, bring your scythe and muck in. There will be camping available on the reserve on both the Friday and the Saturday nights. There are toilets, running water and a shower. You can come for the weekend, or for a day, or for a few hours: as you like.
Please note that this is not a teaching weekend. It’s an opportunity for mowers who already know the basics to come and get some good mowing time in. You’ll need to bring your own scythe and kit, and know how to use them. That said, you don’t have to be any kind of expert: just willing to come and have a go.
On the Friday evening, if enough people are around, we will traipse to the local (excellent) pub to sample the wares. On the Saturday night, weather permitting, we’ll have a barbecue, with charcoal made in the reserve. We’ll all have to provide our own food for this, and you’ll also need to bring any other meals you want or need as there is no food provision on site. Those of us who are coming can exchange food plans via email soon, and we can bring camping stoves to cook if we like. There is tea, coffee and water on site. What to bring:
Tent and sleeping gear.
Food, including something to barbecue.
Any drinks you want in addition to tea, coffee and water.
Your scythe and scythe kit (a ditch blade is recommended).
Some good boots. Where to come:
Hay Bridge Nature Reserve is in Bouth, south Cumbria. The website is here.
The nearest train station is Grange-over-Sands. Lifts from the station might be possible, depending on when you’re coming. For any more information, contact me on paul@paulkingsnorth.net
See you there!
This week I’m getting ready to mow wheat in Lancashire as part of Whitey’s Working Weekend. The hosts, Margaret & Andrew Webster, came to the Cumbria Scythe Festival with their family to see if they could find someone with a scythe to take part in their ‘Harvesting through the ages’ demonstration and, for some reason, I put my hand up.
The thing with cereals is, because of the seed head, they’re top-heavy so when they’re cut they have a tendency to fall all over the place rather than being carried by the blade into neat windrows like grass is. This is even more important with cereals as you ideally want the stems aligned ready to make into sheaves. Otherwise it’s a long job to sort and collect up. What’s needed is some kind of catcher to collect the stems as they’re cut and put them neatly to the mower’s left hand side and there’s basically two types to choose from. The simplest is a thin willow or hazel rod bent into a curve and attached at the blade which pushes the cereals in the right direction. More advanced is the cradle, a contraption of long fingers suspended on a frame above the blade. These collect up the stems which can be dumped out at the end of the stroke into a neat sheaf. Allegedly.
They were most common in the US, with millions in use during the 1800’s and there’s plenty to be found in old photos and museums. Finding someone who’s ever done it is proving more difficult even though they were still used into the 20th century to ‘open up’ the field for a machine.
The combine harvester of the future?
For a couple of years now I’ve been working with my friend John Letts, who grows ancient wheat in Oxfordshire, on developing the tools and techniques for harvesting. John & I have built and tried out a few different models with varying success. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to his Lammas Day harvest festival this year where he unveiled this futuristic aluminium model.
So there’s a really good reason I put my hand up. I’ve got the chance to play with whatever bows and cradles I can make in a field full of wheat with the owner’s blessing. Hopefully something will work but even more than that, I’mhoping someone will be stood in the crowd gently shaking their head and smiling before coming over to show me how it should be done.
Once your grass is cut you need to do something with it. Hopefully that means enough warm dry weather to make sweet-smelling hay for the winter but at the least cleaning it from the meadow so as not to smother the new growth. You’re going to need a rake.
This weekend I spent a day with Brian Williamson at Westonbirt Arboretum learning about rake making. For my money, Brian’s rakes are the best I’ve seen so he’s the perfect man to learn from. Among other things, he’s a mine of information regarding stail engines, an amazing old tool for rounding up and tapering the long handle, or stail. A gradual taper over 6ft of stail may make only a small difference to the balance and feel of the tool but when it’s something you could be using it for several hours, those subtleties are important. Like a giant adjustable pencil sharpener, the engine is rotated along the roughed out stail, peeling off a shaving and smoothing as it goes. The first pass rounds the wood up, the second (and possibly even a third) puts on the taper. The knack is in setting the blade to take just the right cut; too deep and its too heavy to turn, not enough and the wood binds in the hole. Get it just right and lovely long shavings fall away leaving a smooth surface that will glide through the hands.
Brian’s rakes have a split stail where they join the head with 14 tines (teeth) set at 90degrees. At one time there would have been local variations, partly based on the working conditions, partly on the maker’s own preferred style. I have an Austrian rake, and seen old ones over there, with the tines set back at 45degrees . This seems to have the advantage of them lying flatter on the ground when the rake’s held but we agreed more investigation is needed. I’ve just recently introduced Brian to mowing so we went with his shiny new scythe and cut some grass at the Arboretum so as to have something to rake. Making a tool and then going out to use it is a wonderful feeling and the rake performed well, both for moving the grass around and flicking it up to fluff and dry.
With the photos and advice, I’ll be making my own stail engine soon and then rakes ready for next year’s hay.
After who knows how many weeks without rain, fears the grass would all be burnt off and the commencement of a lakes-wide hosepipe ban, the first Cumbrian Scythe Festival took place amid pouring rain.
Nonetheless, 18 hardy souls turned up on the saturday for a weekend of scythe tuition. As the stormclouds emptied themselves, we occupied the morning safely under cover with Christiane Lechner and Paul Kingsnorth teaching half the group how to set up their scythe ready for mowing while I demonstrated peening the blade to reshape the cutting edge.
The man from the local paper appeared just as we, and the rain, stopped for lunch. As always he wanted to set the three of us up for some cheesy photos but was at least honest enough to admit that’s what they were and didn’t ask us to wave the blade over the grass at ankle height or anything. You can see the results here.
Then up the hill, scythes in hand for a thankfully dry afternoon of mowing with the spectacular backdrop of the Langdale valley. The grass was sparse, the ground was sloped but the group got to grips with it all, learning to move gently and slide the blade through the sward.
I’ve been going to the Somerset Scythe Festival since it started in 2005, seen it grow and become increasingly involved over the years. So when I moved north last year I wanted to see if something similar was possible up here and got involved with Ian Hunter and Celia Larner of the Littoral Trust who had been running a scythe event in Lancashire. We decided to move it to Elterwater in the heart of the Lake District and see who would turn up. And what an interesting group they were; smallholders, coppice workers, farmers and managers of public and private meadows. Some had mown before, some complete beginners but all came with enthusiasm and ideas for future mowing projects in the north-west. It feels like the start of something really exciting.
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After who knows how many weeks without rain, fears the grass would all be burnt off and the commencement of a lakes-wide hosepipe ban, the first Cumbrian Scythe Festival took place amid pouring rain.
