Scything at Beamish Museum

The Austrian scythe is a thoroughly modern tool but it was great fun to be asked to teach a Learn to Scythe course for some of the staff at Beamish Museum in County Durham this weekend.
The weather was hot and sunny and the course coincided with the museum’s Georgian Fair so our novice scything team got plenty of onlookers and made a great addition to the other activities going on.

I really enjoyed the cameraderie and joking among the staff which would surely have been the case among a real scything gang of the era.

Haymaking season was well-known as a time when men and women would have chance to meet and spend time together in the fields to gossip and court. Our season, even though it was only one day long, was no exception.