 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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 It's been a while since I have posted an update on my experiments with my pyramid haystack system. I've been working with beefing up the haystack frame with cedar posts, and covering the stack with used billboard tarps. To follow the whole thread, you can start at the first haystack blog post. For this update I posted three new videos on YouTube showing how I build up my pyramid haystacks. I also have the videos posted at the bottom of this blog entry. Over the years I have often been asked how I get the shape of the stack to come out so well. It seems to be something people are having trouble with. Like many of my previous scythe videos, I don't shy away from showing how the work gets done in real time, so I don't speed up the footage. My intent is to give a realistic sense of the time and amount of work involved. But don't worry, my Siamese cat does his best to keep you entertained!
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