Learn to scythe in 2024! Scything is a fantastic way to manage your garden, meadow, orchard or allotment. My courses are suitable for beginners and you’ll learn everything you need to use and maintain an Austrian scythe. Courses in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria.
My course dates for 2024 are now set, book via Eventbrite: Learn to Scythe workshops
You can also book me to teach you or a group privately at your own venue, email stevetomlin8@gmail.com for details.
My spoon carving workshop dates for 2024 are now set and available to book with venues at Manchester, Derby, the Yorkshire Dales and N. Wales.
During the day, you’ll learn to use traditional axe and knives techniques to safely and efficiently carve your own unique cooking spoon from a fresh birch log.
Spoon carving is an absorbing and fun hobby and a brilliant introduction to wood working. My courses are suitable for complete beginners as well as those wanting to gain more experience and improve their skills.
Spoon Carving Courses 2024
I’ve been teaching a lot at Greenwood Days recently, including an ash splint basket making workshop.
Starting from raw splints as they come off the tree, participants learn to grade and prepare the material before we start weaving.
We fit a triple rim for maximum strength as well as neatness, the same method I use for my ash splint packbaskets. The result is a strong yet flexible and elegant basket. More importantly, the students leave with the knowledge and skills to start working with ash splint and weaving baskets themselves.
Visit my courses page for details of this years workshops or sign up to the newsletter to hear first about future event. I can also deliver the course for a group at your own venue, email me for details.
I love teaching ash splint basket making to groups but realise that not everyone can get to a workshop. To help you get started with this fantastic basket making material, I’ve produced a simple pdf download of instructions.
The guide takes you through the whole process including how to source timber, pound splints, prepare the materials and weave a table basket. Step by step with detailed photos, this is the same basket that you make with me on my beginner’s ash splint basket course.
The ash splint basket making instruction pdf is available from my Etsy store as an instant download.
Spoon carving is a brilliant way to get into all kinds of wood carving. During my beginner’s courses, you’ll learn how to carve with an axe and knives to create a spoon right from a log to the finished product.
During the one day course, you’ll learn the basics of carving and go home with a unique stirring spoon along with loads of skills to get you started. On the two day course we also move on to making spreaders and serving spoons. This includes a lot more about working with the grain of the wood, design and finishing techniques and is perfect if you’re looking for the best way to start carving.
Find and book my courses via Steve Tomlin Crafts on Eventbrite
People are often surprised to learn that I live in Manchester and how much scything takes place in urban areas. At Highfield Country Park, I’m involved in training local volunteers to help with managing the site.
The first scythe training day took place this week and we started cutting the wet meadow on site as well as one of the smaller ‘meadow rooms’ that we’re creating.
I’ve spent the last couple of days training this lovely group of volunteers to scythe at Tittesworth Reservoir in Staffordshire for Severn Trent Water.
We were dodging the rain while learning about aetting up an Austrian scythe, honing in the field and mowing including cutting flattened grass and on a slope.
We also did some peening of the blades so the team is fully equipped with all the skills to use their scythes on the site. Now, they just need to practise and they have plenty of grass for that!
If your conservation group would like to learn to scythe, check out my Learn to Scythe page and get in touch.
I stumbled on this lovely poem by Bernadette Gallagher this morning and had to share it.
Haymaking
Who is it beckons me to try
My hand and body with a scythe
Is it someone that I know or is it
Someone beyond, that now
Lifts whetstone to the steel?
My memory of seeing men cut grass
While women and children rake and turn
Until the hay is dry then build a stack
Fork up the hay to the one on top
Who walks around making even underfoot.
And then a cover thrown over
Held down by heavy stones
To keep the hay
For hungry cows
When morning and nights are cold
Farmers now admit
That was the way
Of yesterday, today machines cut
And lift and into silage pits
The grass that once turned into hay.
With my scythe I carry on
Cutting a small meadow
That once was lawn.
This year was my first and too late
For making hay.
The grass I cut will lie
In mini stacks, not fully dry
But dry enough to keep
Small wild things warm through winter
And into Spring.
Next year I will be prepared
Will clean down the blade
Tighten bolts, peen and sharpen
Remove the burr
And put aside my pen.
(c)Bernadette Gallagher
Very welcome cooler weather for the Learn to Scythe course at Brigflatts Meeting House in Sedbergh today.
It’s a beautiful venue for the course and lovely to see the meadow changing over the years that I’ve been teaching and scything here.
Among todays group were several staff and apprentices from Cumbria Wildlife Trust who will be using their skills on sites across the county.
There are still some spaces available on my scything workshops later this summer, email stevetomlin8[at]gmail.com for details.
The scythe isn’t just a tool for rural spaces, it’s also perfect for the small green spaces that are so important in cities. Just half a mile from my home is Levenshulme community orchard, a tiny space between rows of terraced houses. I’ve been helping to manage it for a couple of years now.
The grass had really grown up during No Mow May so I decided to cut it before it started to lodge.
The grass may be tall but it’s no trouble for the scythe to cut cleanly to the ground.
I left patches of grass where the yellow rattle I previously sowed has come up. This will help reduce the density of the grass to encourage wild flowers to appear.
