Mow tall grass and weeds with ease. Harvest your own hay, bedding, and mulch from your own land, without the use of heavy, expensive, and polluting machines. Even grow and harvest your own grains. Our mission is to provide the best performing scythes available, and the knowledge necessary for people to be able to utilise them to their fullest ecological potential.

NO FUEL, NO NOISE, NO POLLUTION.

Whether you are alarmed about Climate Change, Peak Oil, Social Justice, Health Care, Food Safety & Security, or all of the above... At their roots, they all have one solution in common: We must fundamentally change the way we grow our food!  Big, mechanized, chemical agriculture is ruining our health, depleting our soil, building up toxins in our environment, wasting the remaining oil, massively increasing CO2 levels in our atmosphere, and financially devastating the closest thing that we have to sustainable farmers; namely small family farms.  
  Peak Oil expert Richard Heinberg states that in order to continue to grow the same amount of food in the future, without the use of cheap oil, we will need 40-50 million farmers, farming 3-50 acres, mostly with hand tools. No, not like in the Middle Ages. We are talking about appropriate technology here.

 Small-scale farmers, meet one of your new tools. The modernized "Austrian" scythe....

I sell the finest, hand-forged, scythe blades currently being produced, from Austria. The factory that makes these blades has been making scythe blades since 1540. All our blades have the same tang angle, and are all interchangeable on our snaths. The grass and field blades are triple-peened by the factory, and are super-sharp, and truly "maehfertig" (ready-to-mow). Our bush blades are also factory sharpened, and are ideal for mowing mature, thick-stemmed weeds.

My wooden snaths are made in Switzerland, from Swiss Ash wood, and feature a gentle, double-curve, and have adjustable, ergonomic grips. Precision milling and superb quality, traditional Swiss woodworking. The adjustment mechanism for the grips hold very securely and is patented. I am also developing a new snath, with my friend Larry Cooper, that is to be manufactured in the USA. Hopefully it will be available the summer of 2013.

Whetstones are used to keep your scythe blade sharp while out mowing in the field. They are carried in a metal, plastic, or cowhorn whetstone holder, that contains water and is clipped to your belt. I carry a fine assortment of naturally quarried and man-made whetstones.

Austrian scythe blades are sharpened by thinning out the metal at the edge, with a hammer and scythe anvil, and then the edge is finished by honing it with a whetstone. They are not sharpened on a grindstone, like the American-style blade. We specialize in freehand peening with narrow anvils. We sell various complete peening kits, with the finest anvils available, and a highly detailed peening instruction manual written by Botan Anderson.

To make hay with a scythe, a hayrake is essential for tedding and turning the drying hay, and gathering up the finished hay. I sell classic, split-head, wooden hayrakes, made by the Cheesebrough factory of Michigan since 1864.

It takes a lot of skill to use a scythe effectively. The best way to learn how to use a scythe is at a scythe workshop with a qualified scythe instructor. You will get a huge leg-up on the learning curve, by attending a 1SR scythe workshop. One Scythe Revolution has started a scythe instructor training program, with the goal of having qualified instructors within driving distance of everyone in the United States. An ambitious project; it may take a while. To see if there is a workshop near you, check our Calendar of Events page. We also have online instructional info to help you get a better start, if you can not attend a workshop.

Newspaper article in The Country Today: "The cutting edge: St. Croix County scythe expert says ancient haying tool making comeback on small farms"

Larry Cooper's Broadfork blog post on the "One Scythe Revolution"

1SR is listed on the Austrian Scythe Associations website as a recognized member of the International Scythe Network. Scythe Network Members, USA: One Scythe Revolution

Tara and Tyler of GoingSlowly.com, stopped by my farm in the middle of winter, to learn about scythes and sickles for harvesting reed for thatching. Reed-Collecting-Tools: Sickles & Scythes

Harvey Ussery's article "The Scythe: Historical Tool on the Modern Homestead" in Countryside and Small Stock Journal

Huffington Post:  Marcel Theroux: Scything in Suburbia

Wall Street Journal: video "Scythes Re-appear in Suburban Gardening"

Wall Street Journal: "Who Needs a WeedWacker When You Can Use a Scythe"

"The Scythe" on the APM radio show, The Story: "Sixteen Inches of Radio".

Homesteading and Philosophy blog post: "The Scythe"

Follow us on Facebook: One Scythe Revolution and Mystic Prairie Eco-Farm and Gulland Forge Broadforks

Follow us on YouTube: Scythesman8