An Announcement from the Heritage Wheat Conservancy:

HERITAGE WHEAT FIELD DAY - BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT
SUNDAY JULY 25,  2010

Join us for a wheat field day in Brattleboro, VT at the SIT Farm.

They said we couldn't do it, but we did! We're building a local wheat-to-bread system, variety by variety, field by field.

Help us harvest almost-extinct ancient wheats einkorn and emmer,
delicious Rouge de Bordeaux French heritage wheat, and robust Banatka,
reknowned for baking quality in Eastern Europe. Take home a sheaf of what you select, to plant in your own farm or garden.

Schedule:
10:00  Select for local adaptability and robust resistances
11:30  Workshop: Restoring Heritage Wheat and Bread Traditions
12:30  Potluck Lunch with tastings of delicious einkorn bread
            that is safe for most gluten allergies!

Directions: I-91 Exit 3, South at rotary onto RT 5, take first right onto Black Mountain Rd, Drive up the windy road. Right at SIT, at the Wheat Festival sign.
Contact: Eli Rogosa:  [email protected]
See growseed.org for details

Hello Botan, Your site is a great resource for folks (like me) wanting to learn about sustainable farming. 

 I think of the thing that I made as a "catcher" or "pusher" modification to a mowing scythe for the purpose of harvesting grain.  From watching the video on your site, I could not tell if those German farmers had a temporary addition to their scythe or not (though I thought so because at the end, the guy detached his blade and re-attached it under the clamp along the snath), but I wanted mine to be detachable.  And that's the real difference in my mind-- one is a temporary modification to a tool to get a specific job done and the other is a permanent and specialized tool.  For example, one would not want to use a grain cradle to mow a lawn!  (The cradles I've seen have really short snaths and long, wooden tines going out over, parallel to the blade.)  David Tresemer, in his The Scythe Book, shows an "F.A.O cradle" (figure 26) that is very similar to the catcher, but it is bent inward (at the blade end) out over the beard of the blade.  It does appear to be a temporary attachment.

New for 2010. 75cm (30in.) long, 50 mm wide, 495g. This new model is the result of a research and development project conducted by Gerhard Wagner, consulting engineer for the SFX factory. His goal was to design a new scythe blade that mows the most efficiently.