Congratultions to Peter Backwell and Sarah Robinson, champions of this year’s Northern Scythe Festival mowing competition. The event took place in the beautiful meadows of Bell Sykes farm which Peter farms and is the donor meadow for many other meadows under a Forest of Bowland AONB project managed by Sarah so they are worthy champions on many levels.
Like many of the competitors, Peter and Sarah spent the morning peening their scythe blades ready for racing. Sarah is well used to working with the peening jig and I was happy to give her some help and instruction on freehand peening the edge of the blade to get an extra level of sharpness. I am teaching a peening workshop at Bell Sykes on 10th Oct 2021 if you’d like to come and learn these skills yourself – email me for details.
Racing really isn’t my thing as I always get too nervous so I was pretty disappointed by my own efforts but it’s always exciting to watch and I managed to redeem myself a little by being part of the winning group in the team competition.
Mainly though, it was a chance to meet up with friends and enjoy being out in the beautiful meadow, working together and talking about our passion for scythes and meadows.
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