Scything can be an almost blissful experience - mowing grass so it looks like a golf course green with minimal effort or noise, just a relaxing sweep of motion accompanied by the sound of a soft 'whoosh' of grass falling to the ground. I've experienced a serene scything session. But I've also endured much more frustrating times where I ended up out of breath with blisters on my hands and just a bit of hacked up grass to show for all my effort.
Ian Miller wrote The Scything Handbook so more people can enjoy the peaceful and productive way of scything. To achieve this, you need three things:
1. The right scythe for your body type and the job;
2. A sharp scythe blade; and
3. Good mowing techniques.
My great experience came at a scything symposium where, after a day of learning about scything, someone lent me a scythe that was perfectly suited to my body and sharp as a razor.
People gave me advice about how I could improve my method. Miller admits that this is the best way to learn to scythe - have an experienced hand-mower critique your method - but he does a good job of explaining how to use a scythe.
As with most (if not all) current scything enthusiasts, Miller recommends the Austrian or European scythe, but not one off the shelf. The height of the snath (handle) should reflect your height and length of your legs; the position of the lower grip depends on your cubit (distance from elbow to fingertips). The choice of blade reflects the use - a short, stubby 'bush blade' works well in brambles, a thin and slender 'grass blade' is for mowing fine grass and a general-purpose blade does a fairly good job of both.
Sharpening is a huge part of scything. Honing the blade with a whetstone is recommended every five to ten minutes of mowing. Miller describes how to choose a whetstone and how to hone the blade.
The other aspect of blade care is ‘peening’
— hammering the edge of the blade, thinning it, until it can be easily sharpened with the whet- stone. The easiest way to peen is to use a jig but Miller says “the results are less satisfactory than when peening with hammer and anvil.” I was dis- appointed to find he doesn’t explain how to use a jig and expects all readers to adopt the more challenging method (which he does describe) of using a hammer and anvil.
With text and diagrams, Miller shows readers how to scythe in a way that is in harmony with your body. For the uninitiated, some of the advice may sound counter-intuitive, such as keeping part of the scythe blade resting on the ground for the entire stroke. This is, however, the way to scythe with ease.
Miller writes, “Mowing with a scythe is about finding a way of dancing with the scythe in your hands so that in the end there’s a pile of cut grass behind you and you feel as if you’ve hardly done anything.” To achieve this, he offers meditation tips and relaxation methods to centre, stretch and soothe the body, some based on the Alexander Technique (a relaxation and stretching technique based on principles of good posture, and mind body integration).
The chapter on the history of scythes and manufacturing methods seems a bit like filler, but I appreciate the advice in the last chapter about growing grain on a small-scale. Miller offers useful information on selecting crops, cutting straw, harvesting grain with a scythe and processing grain.
Overall, The Scything Handbook is useful if you want to break your dependency on lawn- mowers, brush cutters or bush hogs, and still cut grass and grain for livestock, compost and land- clearing.
- Janet Wallace