a:  Scything appears to be a great alternative to the brush clearing I do with a 6 hp DR trimmer, but I want to know if there are scythes that will clear heavier brush like blackberry and vine brambles like wisteria, kudzu and English ivy overgrowth, even saplings, etc. where the growth is not a consistent grass but general mixtures of high weeds.

b: Clearly, I consider the physical aspect a full body exercise, but would hacking through heavy, high weeds and vine tangles be excessively tiring even though I had good technique?

c: And, Is scything effective if I were to top off vining ground cover, for fresh growth, without keeping the blade on the ground, which appears to be consistent methodology in videos.

Back in the 1980's, I was inspired to have a natural farm someday, when I read The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka, in college, and I also saw a documentary on Fukuoka's farm, at a Francis Moore Lappe conference. I experimented on a backyard scale for many years. Neighbors often complained about the jungle in my yard. I kept the "jungles" in raised beds, so the city would let me keep on experimenting, and mowed the lawn with a push-reel mower. By the time it became feasible for me to move back to the country, and start a larger scaled version, I had arrived at a concept that I called the "scythe-based farm". Instead of tilling, which would have required me to have a what I called a roto-tiller or tractor-based farm, I planned on a no-till method of heavy mulching with hay and straw, harvested from my own land with a scythe. Eventually I hoped to grow my own grains as well. The goal is to build the soil from the top, without using fossil fuels.

When I tell people about my scythes, they often comment that "Yes, scythes are a useful tool, but you can't mow a whole field with one." Well they used to; and in some parts of the world, they still do! It's a matter of scale, number of scythers, and time.  Here's a series of 4 videos on YouTube, from Serbia, posted by misicgricko5, where they are mowing a rather large field as a group.