 Two years ago, Inga Witscher and her father, and her husband, each bought a 1SR Haying outfit from me to make scythe cut hay for a small herd of mini-Jerseys on their farm in Osseo Wisconsin. Later they invited me to teach a haymaking workshop at their farm. Through their contacts, the event got some good publicity, including this article in the country today "The cutting edge: St. Croix County scythe expert says ancient haying tool making comeback on small farms." Inga is also the host of a cable tv cooking show called Around The Farm Table. She incorporated cooking a meal for the scythe workshop into her show. Good food has a way of showing up at scythe workshops, but this meal was spectacular! (BTW, the recipe for "switschel" can be found on page 63 of The Scythe Book.)
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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.
Here I am scything with an 85cm Fux 2010 Haying blade. Available at; 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. Always a crowd-pleaser, but I think what would be an even more fair competition, would be to race a $200 scythe against a $200 mowing machine. Or better yet, determine how many calories the scytheman burned, and then give the machine an equivalent amount of calories of gasoline, and see how far it gets! A brilliant assessment, by my hero Vandana Shiva, of the magnitude of what we are up against. I highly recommend watching this video below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGCrbX2vUXc&feature=share What can we do about it? Create small, sustainable, natural farms with hand tools. If you can't do that yourself, support those who are attempting to do this.
Raise heirloom and heritage vegetables, fruits, and grains; save and share the seed. Raise, and breed out heritage livestock. Spend as little money as possible, on all the things that support the industries that are destroying the planet. Every dollar you spend, is a vote for what you want more of. "Vote" for the environment every chance you get. A scythe can be used to harvest building materials. Reed Canary grass can be harvested in early winter for making thatched roofs and cob building. If harvested in early winter after a couple of light snows, and freezes and thaws, the leaves tend to fall off, leaving mostly stalks, which is better for thatching. Reed Canary grass can also be harvested in late Fall, in prime condition, and stored for the next season of cob building. Run it through a chipper and mix with the clay for cob building. What would be more fitting roofing material for a cob building, than a thatched roof. Here is a nice little video on the traditional method of harvesting water reed with a scythe, for thatching roofs. Water reed makes the most durable thatched roof, but the long straw from heritage grains can also be used for thatching. My Sepp Holzer rye would make a nice straw for that, as would my Black Winter Emmer wheat, I would guess. They are both at least 5ft tall, with great stems. I would love to experiment with that, if only I had more time, and energy, and money! Who wouldn't like to live in a place like this:  A cottage in Lyme Rigis on the South Coast of England. Is there any interest in thatching in the USA? Yes, there is. See these links:
http://journal.goingslowly.com/2012/12/thinking-about-thatch http://journal.goingslowly.com/2012/12/reed-collecting-tools-sickles-scythes http://journal.goingslowly.com/2013/01/reed-collecting-thatching-with-deanne-bednar |
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