<![CDATA[One Scythe Revolution

<![CDATA[One Scythe Revolution - Blog]]>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:42:44 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Regreening the Desert with john D. Liu]]>Tue, 21 Mar 2023 15:51:38 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/video-regreening-the-desert-with-john-d-liuThis video with John D. Liu feels to me like one of the most important documentaries I've ever seen. Liu says, " It is possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems. If we can, ... why don't we do that?"

]]><![CDATA[Cutting grass at a 6-inch Height]]>Mon, 13 Sep 2021 15:09:02 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/cutting-grass-at-a-6-inch-height

I was asked by a regenerative grass farmer who wants to raise pastured rabbits, if a scythe could cut tall grass down to a 6-inch height. He is required by state law to keep his rabbits in cages. So he wants to keep his rabbits in movable cages, with a wire mesh floor, and move them daily across a pasture. He wants to mow a 20 square foot area of tall grass down to an optimal height of 6 inches, then rake aside and gather the cut grass, pull the cage onto the cut area, and then put the fresh-cut grass inside the cage for the rabbits to eat. Basically replicating regenerative grazing with a scythe and caged rabbits. The tops of the grass gets cut at an optimal height and directly eaten, and the topsoil gets fertilized with rabbit manure.
Why the 6-inch height requirement, I asked? According to this farmer, when pasture grass is grazed or cut to a minimum height of 6 inches, it is able to regenerate quicker, and over time will sequester more carbon in the soil, than grass that is grazed or cut shorter. When grass is grazed shorter than 6 inches, the corresponding amount of root dieback greatly slows the regrowth of the plant. Plus it makes it more vulnerable to dry spells. Overall, you get less carbon (organic matter) building up in the soil, he said.
In the tradition of mowing with a scythe, grains were often cut high above the weeds (see video), but grass is normally cut very short. Unlike grain stalks, grass is very bendy and therefore much easier to cut with a scythe blade near the base of the plant, where it bends out of the way the least. Also, it is much, much easier to tedd and rake the hay, when the field has been cut short and clean. With a very sharp blade and good technique, you can push the limits of how high you mow grass. Grasses with stiffer stems, like timothy, brome, and foxtails, are the easiest to cut at a 6-inch height. It is simple enough to rake up the fresh cut grass, but it would be difficult to process it into well cured hay out in the field. The fresh green grass would keep snagging your hayrake and green grass would keep mixing in with the drying hay, and drying hay would get mixed in with the green grass and be lost. It would be messy.
I made the quick video above to illustrate how it can be done. I just used my usual hayfield scythe set-up; my 1SR snath and an 85cm Falci 100. If I had to mow a lot of grass at a 6-inch height, I would set my grips lower and switch to a shorter and lighter 75cm Fux 2010, or Falci 100 blade.

]]><![CDATA[No-Dig Gardening with Scythe Cut Mulch]]>Mon, 23 Nov 2020 14:56:39 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/no-dig-gardening-with-scythe-cut-mulch I first became interested in using hay for deep mulching my vegetable garden, back in the 1990's, after seeing a wonderful film about Ruth Stout, and her deep hay mulch gardening technique, at a Community Gardening event in Minneapolis. I had been using straw to mulch my garden beds since the 1980's, after seeing The One-Straw Revolution. I had always heard it was a bad idea to mulch with hay, because there are too many weed seeds. But what if you cut your own hay with a scythe, and didn't harvest when there were seed heads?

In 1999 we bought 20 acres and had a house built in a corner of a hayfield. I bought a scythe, a broad fork, and a garden cart. In 2001, I started a Ruth Stout garden in the hayfield near our house. Ruth Stout pioneered no-dig gardening by simply piling on a deep layer of hay mulch, to suppress weeds and to build the soil from the top down, and continuously adding more mulch as needed. To plant seeds, she simply pulled some mulch aside and planted into the soil, and then closed the mulch back around the plant as it grew, and added more mulch as needed. If weeds came up, she simply plopped a flake of baled hay on them. She owned a 10 acre hayfield next to her garden, which she had a neighbor bale, in exchange for some of the hay. She had the bales stacked up by her garden for a plentiful supply of mulch.

I think Ruth Stout just covered her entire garden area with deep hay mulch, but I wanted create a garden with very defined footpaths, so that I would not compact the clay soil in the garden beds by walking on them. I scythed and raked the area for my garden clear, and plotted out ten 4'x8' garden beds, with 2' wide grass pathways in between. I had planned on mowing the garden paths with my old push reel mower, and to mulch out the sod under the new garden beds with a heavy layer of hay mulch. And then to continuously add more mulch as needed.

I then selectively scythed areas of grass from my hayfield, that did not have seed heads, and let it dry. Then I hauled it to my garden area by the house in a garden cart. I quickly learned that the garden cart did not hold a lot of hay, and that when I tried to pile it on, the wheels rolling over the bumpy soil of my field would bounce some hay off, and I would leave a trail of hay that I would have to pick up a second time. So I started raking the hay onto a tarp, and just dragged it over to the garden by the house. I piled up about an 8-inch deep layer of hay mulch on the garden beds to smother out the sod, and waited.

Once the grass on the paths grew back, I discovered that the little wheels of the push reel mower also bounced around too much on the bumpy clay soil surface, to work well, and it could not cut the clumps of orchard grass that came up. So I thought,"I have a scythe! Why not just move the garden beds a scythe stroke apart and mow them with my scythe? I had the space, and I could use what I cut from the lawn directly on the beds for mulch."

So I redid all the deep mulched garden beds, so that the paths in between were a nice and easy scythe stroke wide, about 6 ft. Unfortunately, the 4x8 beds spread out like that and mounded with mulch, reminded me of a cemetery. So I redid it once again, and lengthened the beds to 12ft. This looked much better.

I had also discovered in my first attempt that some of the hayfield grasses, like orchard grass, that I was trying to smother out, were vigorous enough to quickly grow up through the mulch. So I saved up some cardboard and tried covering the sod on the new beds with the cardboard first, then added the hay mulch on top of it. This was not very successful either. The cardboard was too stiff to conform well to the bumpy, clay soil surface, and would dry out. My new farm was in a very windy area, and the hot weather and high winds kept drying out the mulch on top of the cardboard faster than I could keep up with watering it. Once dried out, the wind would slide the dry hay off the slippery cardboard, and then the cardboard would dry out and blow away too. The hay mulch placed directly on the sod stayed put, because more moisture would wick up from the soil and anchored it down.

By 2003 I had started raising ducks, and I was making hay to use as duck feed and bedding as well. In time I learned that the duck hay bedding, plastered with manure, was much better at smothering out the sod for a new garden bed, than the sheets of cardboard, and it was much easier to compost in place like that anyway, rather than trying to turn it into a compost heap. I later learned that tree leaves also plaster down and work well as the first layer. Especially maple leaves. A 4-6 inch layer of fall leaves, covered with the weight of another 6-8 inch layer of scythe-cut green grass or dry hay mulch, plasters down the leaves nicely, once rain and snow soak it down, and smothers the sod much better than hay alone. Plus, I think the decaying leaves increases the mycorrhiza in the garden soil. Earthworms also love it, and help break down the leaves and mulch, and mix the compost deeper in the soil. I noticed that earthworms especially seemed to like the plastered goose manure bedding. When I cleaned out my goose house at the end of nesting season, and used the matted down bedding to mulch out new garden beds, by spring I had humous topsoil, so deep and loose, that I could stir it with my big toe. So if you have a yard with leaves to rake up, and a field with hay to mow, you have good ingredients to start a deep-mulch garden bed somewhere.

Seasonal timing:

Whenever I used my duck and goose bedding to start a new garden bed, I would layer the sheets plastered hay onto the sod, and cover it thickly with hay or fresh cut grass, and not plant into it until the following spring. This gave it time to kill the sod and give the duck and goose bedding time to completely compost it place.

Fall is the obvious time of year to rake leaves and to use them as your base layer of mulch, for creating a new mulched-out garden bed, ready to plant into in the spring. I learned that raking leaves in the fall was not ideal for the insects that need the dead leaf ground cover to survive winter. So I would put off raking the leaves until early spring. When the grass was high enough to mow again for the first time of the season, I would scythe the lawn grass and the decaying leaves at the same time. The scythe stroke raked most of the leaves into a windrow, along with the cut grass, which made it easy to rake onto a tarp and drag it to the new garden bed area. I would scythe the new garden bed area clear, and then spread a dense 4-6-inch deep layer of the dead leaves and scythe-cut lawn grass mix to form the new garden bed. I would then pile the fresh cut grass I had cut to clear the space on top of the leaf-and-grass mulch, and pile on the grass from subsequent mowings as well. The brown leaves and green grass make an ideal composting mix, and matte down and decompose nicely. Here in Garden Zone 4, if I cut and rake the lawn in April, and use it right away to mulch out a garden bed, the underlying sod is pretty well smothered and can be planted into by the end of May, with starter plants or potatoes.

Windrow Gardening

I got the idea for windrow gardening, after I taught my first Advanced Scythe Workshop. Eight advanced scythers using long 2010 haymaking blades, and mowing prime hay, around the solstice, laid down so much grass that I could not keep up with processing it all by myself. By the time I was done tedding and turning all that hay, I was late for starting all over again. Plus, it kept getting rained on, and I would have to start all over again. By the second time the hay got rained on, it was out of control. I didn't have the time to keep at it and some of windrows and haycocks (small stacks of partially dried hay, piled high for overnight, to minimize the surface area that would get wet from dew or rain) of wet, ruined hay, were not gotten to, and remained in the field for several weeks. They completely killed the grass underneath. Even after I finally had all the ruined hay picked up and hauled to my composting pile, the sod was extremely slow to recover. By fall I could still see where the windrows had been. I could still see where a large haycock had been, the following summer. I was surprised at how easy it was to kill the sod, when I wasn't doing it on purpose!

So, I thought what if I harnessed this sod killing power of the windrow to advantage? What if instead of cutting hay in the field, and hauling away to my garden by the house for mulch, what if I used it to create lines of mulched-out garden beds in the hayfield! I started experimenting with scything a double windrow, by going across the field in one direction, creating one windrow, and then turning around and scything back in the other direction, depositing a second windrow on and/or against the first, in effect doubling up the volume of the first windrow. Subsequent mowings could either be added green directly to the windrow, or dried into hay, and if successful, dragged away and stored by the goose house. If the hay was ruined by repeated rainfall, I could simply use it as mulch right there on the mulch-lines in the field, instead of having to haul it away to the compost pile as before. And, if I taught an Advanced Scythe Workshop again, instead of leaving me on my own to process an overwhelming amount of hay, I could just make what hay I could and use the rest right there in the field as mulch. The workshop would then immediately benefit my farm, instead of leaving me with a big mess to clean up.

The area of the field that had originally given me the idea, had very rich Loess topsoil, and dense grass and red clover and a diverse amount of other plants. It had been grazed and fertilized by ducks and geese, and had been scythed for hay, after the geese were preoccupied sitting on their nests for an entire month. My neighboring dairy farmer told me that Wisconsin was the "Dairy State" because Wisconsin had some of the densest grass (the number of plants per square foot) in the country. "It takes twice as much land to feed a cow on sandy soil.", he said. When mowed at peak haymaking time, a double windrow was heavy enough to smother the sod.

By contrast, in 2015, I moved to a farm some 60 miles away, in an area of sandy soil, and I learned the meaning of dirt-poor. Water and nitrogen just leached away. There was a thick layer of thatch under all the sparse grass that just would not break down. There just wasn't enough nitrogen in the soil to break it down. I would have to mow above the thick thatch with my scythe blade.
Ideally, I like the windrow beds to be spaced 2 scythe strokes apart, so that mowing and moving the vegetation would be as efficient as possible. Here on this sandy loam soil, I needed to either space the rows 4 scythe strokes apart and move the scythe cut grass in between, over to the main windrow beds, in order to build up a dense enough layer of mulch to smother out the sod, or I would have to haul in extra mulch from elsewhere.
I opted to haul in extra mulch for the windrow garden beds, since the farm house had a huge front yard with two gigantic silver maple trees. Mowing with a lawnmower cuts and chops up the tops of the grass into small pieces that can be left in place for the grass to grow though. Mowing a lawn with a scythe, cuts the grass closer to the ground and therefore makes a longer blade of cut grass which gets deposited with every stroke into a concentrated windrow, which you need to rake up and haul away, if you want a neat looking and easy to mow lawn. I chose to mow it with a scythe, and to haul the fresh cut grass out to the windrow garden beds in my garden cart. When the silver maple leaves fell in the fall, I would wait until spring to "rake the leaves". By that time they were brown and shriveled, and the grass grew up through them. It was easy to scythe the grass and the leaves and rake everything onto a tarp to drag out to my windrow garden in the open field on the other side of the driveway. This combination of green grass and dead maple leaves made a fantastic smothering layer of mulch. I especially liked to use it to establish a new windrow garden bed with it. I would do this a little bit different than my classic idea for windrow gardening. Instead of mowing to create a double windrow, I would mow the strip clean where I wanted the new mulchline to be, and then I would put down a 6-8 inch layer of the lawn grass and leaf mulch. Then I would cover it back up with the grass I had scythed to clear the way. The green grass with the dead leaves really plastered down nicely, and very effectively smothered out the sod. If I created the mulchline, or garden bed in April, when the lawn needed mowing for the first time of the season, by the end of May/early June, the sod under the mulch would be smothered well enough to plant potatoes, or started plants.

]]><![CDATA[Siberian Rye - Why i want to grow it]]>Fri, 25 Sep 2020 17:13:28 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/siberian-rye-why-i-want-to-grow-itBack in 2006, the high fuel prices during the Iraq War, in conjunction with the Ethanol Mandate, had resulted in skyrocketing feed prices. Gas was over $5 a gallon. Diesel was even more. The duck feed I was buying had just about tripled in price. The bags of wheat, for example that I used to buy for sprouting grains for my ducks feed mix, went from $16 a bag to $46. I gradually doubled the price of my duck eggs, in order to cover the increased feed costs, but as a result I lost half my customers. Then the economy crashed and I lost 95% of the rest of them. I knew of other small farmers in my area in a same situation with skyrocketing feed prices with their organic chicken egg production. They simply decided to cut their losses, and sold all their layers to be butchered for pet food. I could not do that to my lovely Welsh Harlequin ducks, so I forged on at a loss. I ended up shoveling hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of expired duck eggs into my wood shavings compost pile. All that work, all that expense, wasted.
I decided that in order to not be at the mercy of rising fuel prices, and its effect on feed prices in the future, I should jump start my life-long dream of a “One Straw Revolution” grain field, and grow some of my own grains.

My one acre grain field.

In order to accelerate the project, I decided to break my own rule of no-till on my farm, and to have just a one acre area at the bottom of my hill tilled up, so that I could start growing some grains right away. I asked my neighboring dairy farmer, that I had bought my 20 acres from, if he could plow up an acre for me. He said that he didn’t have the equipment to do a good job for my purposes, and he highly recommended a guy that did plowing for intensive vegetable operations. I hired him, and he came over and turned over the sod, and then roto-tilled the field smooth for me. I broadcast seeded Kamut onto the soft, evenly churned up Loess/clay topsoil, on an eighth of the acre, and the rest I seeded heavily with buckwheat. My idea was that if too many weeds came up, I would have it all plowed under again, and reseed with another crop of buckwheat. When the rains came, it all germinated nicely and I was very excited. Then an understory of mustard weeds came up and bloomed, and I had a solid acre of beautiful yellow mustard flowers. I could still see the grain rising above it though, so I was not worried.

Then the next wave of weeds that germinated was ragweed and foxtail. It also rained and rained that summer, and my Loess/clay field was too wet to plow. The new weeds quickly overtook the grains. The one acre grain field turned into a field of 3 foot high ragweed, mixed with foxtail grass of the same height, and everything was intertwined with red clover. You could still see the grains, if you looked down in between the tall weeds, but there was no way I was going to be able to harvest it. Unfortunately the torrential rains persisted, and my little field became as wet as a rice paddy. There was no way to plow the weeds under either.

I really did not want all that ragweed and foxtail to go to seed, and to have even more weeds to deal with in the future, so I decided to mow it all down with my scythe. Scything down an acre of 3 foot high ragweed was a lot of extra work that I had not planned on. I looked at the positive side of it, and regarded it as a giant, chop-and-drop, soil-building, weed-prevention exercise.

Having the field plowed had brought up a lot of small glacial-till rocks, so I had to hold my scythe blade about 3 inches above the ground in order not to be constantly cracking the peened edge on the stones. This was more easily done by simply lowering my grips a couple of notches. I also had a wildwood snath that was a little too short for me on the bottom, that turned out to be just right for mowing above the ground a few inches.

Parts of the field were so wet at one time, the water level was above my shoes, so I had to mow a couple short strokes and then gather up the cut stems into a pile with my blade, so that I could stand on it, and then mow another little pile and so on, until I got to an area with less standing water. I also have a severe ragweed allergy, but I’ll spare you those details. I did manage to mow it all down, before the ragweed and foxtail went to seed, and I spread out the cut stems evenly over the field, to compost in place. When it had dried out, I broadcast cereal rye seed over it. I find that when hay or straw mulch is dry at the surface, seeds fall down through the cracks of the stems down to the humus layer. The rye seemed to come up quite nicely. Either that, or the original pasture grasses that I had plowed under, resurfaced. Most likely a mix of both. By fall, my geese had a lovely fresh pasture to graze, and they enjoyed it immensely. They would waddle out into the pasture to graze, and when they were full, they would flap-and-fly back to the goose barn area.

By spring, it looked like I either had a one acre field of rye or a mix of grass and rye. Then the mustard came back, and it turned the field into a beautiful, solid one acre yellow rectangle again. I wasn’t too worried. But then the mustard was followed by fleabane. At first, I was not worried by fleabane. It usually seemed like an innocuous weed, but to my surprise it grew to be 4 feet tall! And thick! I had a solid one acre field of incredibly dense, 4 feet tall fleabane. I had never seen fleabane so big, nor so much of it. My farmer friends were amazed as well. They had never seen anything like it either. It was like a super weed.
(Note: I am 6'5" tall and the scythe customer in the video below is taller than me.)

There was so much of it to mow down that my progress was very slow. Unfortunately, I did not get all the fleabane mowed down before it went to seed, because I was busy with many other projects. The stalks became so mature and tough, it was easier to mow with my light bush blade.

I had a couple of WWOOFers working with me that summer, and one of them valiantly pledged to finish off mowing down all the fleabane stalks. She got up early every morning and scythed away at the field before it became too hot. She almost succeeded before she had to leave. If she could have stayed a few more days she would have finished it all. She did say that scything in the morning was a great way to start her day. It really made her feel good and got her revved up for the day. A sentiment which I share, and I have also heard that feedback from many others that I have sold scythes to.

I managed to finish scything the rest of the fleabane stalks down by the end of summer. By the time I got to the last part of the field, the fully mature and dry stalks were so big and rigid that it left a high and jumbled mess laying in the field. So I forked up all the cut stems into my garden cart and hauled load after load over to the new windrow garden beds I had been establishing. I got the fleabane stalks aligned, pressed together, and stomped down as the final layer of mulch for the year. Grasses and clover dominated the "grain" field that fall, and once again my geese had a lovely pasture to graze.

In reflecting on the futility of all the extra work and expense in my attempt to simply grow some of my own grains, I felt like Sisyphus perpetually rolling his boulder up the hill. I compared that to in contrast to the ease and reliability with which I could harvest reed canary grass for straw every November, from a different part of the same field less than 100 yards away. I never had to worry about it being taken over by weeds. It made me wish for a grain that could establish itself as a naturally dominant monoculture like the reed canary grass.

Sepp Holzer's book cover showing him holding a handful of his Siberian rye.

I had read about a Siberian rye in Sepp Holzer’s books “The Rebel Farmer”and “Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture”. He says that in 1957, he saw an ad in an Austrian hunting magazine for an ancient Siberian rye that was a great grazing plant for wild game. It was very expensive, so he only ordered 1 kilogram of it and grew it out for seed. He was very happy with it, and has been selecting and breeding it ever since. According to the book, it makes a great pioneer plant for newly disturbed areas. Grazing animals love it. Once established, it can be grazed, or mown for several years, before allowing it to head out and set seed. Setting in back by grazing or mowing, makes it regrow bigger and increases the final yield. The straw is 2 to 2.5 meters high and is strong. It is useful for animal bedding, crafts, and for straw mattresses. The grain makes wonderful bread. Once it sets seed, its lifecycle is done and you can plant a different crop.

What if I had seeded my newly plowed field with this Siberian rye, instead of buckwheat? Then when the ragweed and foxtail had germinated and outgrew the Siberian rye, I could have mowed the field with my scythe to set back the weeds as before, but the base of the rye would still be alive and it would grow back, getting bigger and stronger. Then when the rye came up in the spring the next year but the fleabane took over, I could have mowed down the fleabane, and still had the rye growing. In fact, I probably could have mowed the field when the mustard was in bloom, and set back all of the above weeds at a much earlier, more succulent stage, when the scything would have been much quicker and easier.

I found a source for Sepp Holzer’s rye seed. 100g of seed cost about $50. I bought 100g of seed and started growing it out in my garden.

]]><![CDATA[Word]]>Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:57:57 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/word

]]><![CDATA[Scythe Every Morning]]>Thu, 24 May 2018 13:40:42 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/scythe-every-morning

Scything is a great way to start your day. I enjoy the peace and quiet, and the coolness of mowing in the early morning. Here I am up early to scythe one of my bluegrass duck's pastures. Because of all the duck water and fertilizer, the grass is similar to a dense lawn. Lush green grass like this is much easier to mow first thing in the morning while still covered with dew. The morning bird songs are enjoyable as well. For more info on making hay with a scythe, see https://onescytherevolution.com/haying.html

]]><![CDATA[Vandana Shiva: Soil Not Oil]]>Wed, 25 Apr 2018 20:41:02 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/vandana-shiva-soil-not-oil

]]><![CDATA[Peening a Falci Scythe Blade]]>Sat, 14 Apr 2018 17:39:30 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/peening-a-falci-scythe-bladeI personally peen all the Falci scythe blades for the outfits I sell. Falci puts a very well tapered out primary bevel on their scythe blades. A couple of finishing passes is all that is needed to sharpen and work-harden the edge, to an expert level of sharpness. Once you have mown a lot and need to peen again, because the bevel is so well tapered out, the only peening you will need to do is right at the edge with a downward hammering strike. You basically just need to touch up the edge.

The brand new Falci factory prepared scythe edge. Lacquer removed prior to peening.

The finished peened Falci scythe blade edge.

The thumbnail test shows how well tapered out the edge is, deep into the bevel. A couple of finishing passes right at the edge, brings the edge to the advanced level of sharpness needed for mowing grass with ease. - Botan Anderson

]]><![CDATA[Honing: The Nitty-Gritty]]>Sat, 24 Mar 2018 00:17:15 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/honing-1-the-nitty-gritty

I have been experimenting with an inexpensive digital microscope to see if I can get photos of the scratch marks made on the edge of a scythe blade by all the different whetstones I sell. I would like to be able to see how the different stones compare in their effects on the edge. I peened one of my older Fux Gartensense blades, to where the edge would deflect fairly easily when a thumbnail was pressed up against it. I could not capture the amount of deflection in the photo above, so you will have to take my word for it. It was a nicely peened edge, though not quite as thin as the one in the video. I wanted the edge to be thick enough not to get chewed away by the coarser stones.

Next I marked off 8 sections with some tape, and then I proceeded to hone each section with a different scythe stone. You can see photos of the whetstones I used on my Whetstones page. I honed each section bench-style, with a diagonal, rolling, grinding motion, on the bevel side only, until each stone had raised a burr.. I removed the burr by honing on the back (underside) of the blade, honing towards the edge with the flat side of the stone, to cut off the burr without raising another one on the bevel side. Next I wiped all the sludge off the blade with a wet paper towel and then dried it with a paper towel.

Next I set the blade on a micrometer calibration ruler, and proceeded to try and take pictures of each section. The small lines in the scale are o.1 mm apart. The long lines are 1 mm apart.

Let's take a look. Below are the photos of the grit marks made by the whetstones, starting from the coarsest to the finest.

The Bullthistle. The fibers you see are from the paper towel that I used to wash the gritty sludge off the blade, and then dried the blade with.

Bull Thistle followed with the Arctic Fox whetstone. Setting a scratch pattern with the Bull Thistle, then refining the apex of the edge with the Arctic Fox.

What can we conclude?

These microscope photos are a bit one dimensional. (Well, technically two.). I already know from experience which stones I think work the best. It is very difficult to photograph shiny metal edges to tell how sharp they are, but these photos do reveal the amount of tooth or scratch pattern, that they impart to the edge.

]]><![CDATA[Late Season Brome]]>Wed, 08 Nov 2017 16:05:48 GMThttps://onescytherevolution.com/blog/late-season-brome

Winter is coming, but don't put away your scythes away just yet. This is the time of year that I like to mow brome grass at the straw stage, for use as animal bedding and mulch. It's great for mulching garlic. My favorite blade for this is the 85cm Falci 100. The 100 is formed to slide well over a bumpy field, and so it leaves rather high stubble. This works great with a prime upright hayfield, but it also works great for mowing brome in the late fall for straw. Whereas a flatter blade like the FUX 2010 blade, which hugs the ground and leaves short stubble, would mow everything and shave the ground clean, the Falci 100 will leave a lot of the short green grass behind unmowed. It takes a lot less effort to mainly mow just the dry straw rising above the green grass, than it takes to mow everything clean. Since I want to use the harvested grass as straw, I would rather have more dry matter and less green grass in the mix. The ease of mowing brome at this time of year is a lot of fun!

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