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Now imagine a cluster of small farms where nobody has a tractor. On most days during the growing season, farmers wake up to milk their animals and move them along to the next paddock. But first, before the morning dew has evaporated, they grab their scythes, hone them and do an hour or so of mowing before spreading the grass out to cure and collecting some for the animals to munch on during milking. That evening the farmers hang the grass up on a quadripod or Swedish-style wire rack so that water is shed should it rain. In a week or two, depending on the weather, the finished hay is loaded onto a cart and dumped into the hayloft in the barn, to be dropped down to livestock as needed over the winter.
In midsummer, a patch of small grains, maybe up to 1 acre (0.4 ha) or so, is cut, bound and stooked by these farmers, now working together, then threshed and winnowed a few weeks later with a treadle-powered thresher they chipped in to buy together. Undersown grasses and clovers then take over the patch, returning it to meadow. Animal impact, mostly from pigs, establishes the seedbed in the next acre of meadow for the following year’s crop of small grains.
The scythe and the techniques involved with it come from traditional Alpine farming, which is based on local production for local needs. It improves the soil, increases biomass, prevents erosion and makes for extremely high-quality foods. It involves meaningful work that is creative, challenging and invigorating. In an age where climate change is upon us, the scythe is a technology that is relevant and useful to us all.
At this point, you might think that if it is so easy and pleasant to make hay and grow grains yourself, why aren’t more people doing it already? One explanation is the ubiquitous assumption that the latest, most high-tech solution is necessarily the best one. But, for example, the existence of cars doesn’t mean that bicycles are irrelevant. Both are forms of transportation, yet they meet completely different needs. Replacing your lawn mower with a scythe is much like the experience you may have when choosing to ride your bike to work: exhilaration, rejuvenation and increased energy and confidence.
What Will I Use My Scythe For?
A scythe can tackle a wide range of jobs efficiently, which means you may be able to dispense with a range of garden tools that aren’t in everyday use. You can use it, for example, to mow grass in awkward places such as alongside walls and fences, or on slopes and wet ground that is inaccessible to heavy machinery. Once you have acquired the technique, a scythe is a joy to use and provides a wonderful experience for mind and body.
MOWING THE LAWN If you have a lawn to mow, you may only be familiar with these choices for getting the job done: a gas or electric lawn mower or a hand mower. They are generally effective, but are expensive and noisy. Gas mowers are also incredibly polluting, emitting more polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – probable carcinogens – than a car, increasing ground levels of lung-irritating ozone and emitting carbon dioxide.
To eliminate air and noise pollution, you can use a scythe instead to mow the lawn. You’ll have to let your lawn grow longer than you may be accustomed to for the scythe to be effective, but this also means mowing less frequently. Make hay with the cuttings for backyard livestock such as chickens and rabbits, or use them as a mulch or in the compost bin.
MOWING A WILDFLOWER MEADOW In prairie and wildflower plantings, the scythe can be used to remove problem plants (such as wild parsnip or the saplings of unwanted trees) without causing large amounts of damage either at the point of use or by bringing equipment in and out. Strategically timed, larger-scale mowings can help to encourage desired plants and discourage those that are not wanted.
MULCHING Ask a gardener who does not mulch why this is and the response is likely to be that they do not know what they would use, that it is too expensive or that they don’t want to haul bales of hay or straw. Meanwhile their garden is in the middle of a free source of mulch, if they only had the knowledge and tools to tap into it. The benefits of mulching cannot be overstated. Mulch suppresses weeds and retains moisture, so you need to weed and water less; it covers the soil, thereby preventing erosion, hardpan and the splashback that encourages the spread of soilborne diseases; it insulates the soil, allowing you to keep root crops in the ground longer; and it ultimately adds organic matter to the soil.
Furthermore, being able to make your own mulching material for free makes it easy to use no-till gardening techniques such as sheet mulching, lasagna gardening or no-dig beds that require mulch and compost. Turning the soil is one of the worst things you can do to it as it mixes upper layers of soil into lower layers and vice versa. Different layers of soil have different forms of soil life, and you ultimately destroy soil organic matter and make hardpan more likely. By abandoning tillage and planting directly into a sheet mulch that consists of sheets of newspaper and/or cardboard applied directly to the top of the soil to kill and inhibit weeds plus compost, hay and/or straw on top of the sheet layer, you allow soil microfauna to aerate, loosen and fertilize the soil for you. This creates a win-win situation as it is much better for the soil and is much less work.
COMPOSTING Different sources give varying estimates of the carbon-nitrogen ratio of hay; they range from 25:1, which is in the ideal composting range of 25–30:1, all the way up to 50:1. In general, the more clover or other nitrogen-fixing plants in the hay, the higher the nitrogen content will be. For a diverse lawn, with perhaps fescue and some crabgrass, ground ivy, plantain and a little white clover, it’s a safe bet that it’s closer to 50:1. Hay made from a field of primarily alfalfa and/or red clover is probably closer to 25:1. Hay from your lawn piled alternately with food scraps and manure from backyard livestock will make for fantastic compost. Note that dried hay has a significantly higher C:N ration than freshly cut grass, which is closer to 10:1.
MAKING HAY Hay is an under-appreciated resource for gardeners and small farmers, probably because it is thought of as something that is only made with expensive machinery in huge fields. The scythe is the original grass-harvesting tool, and it leaves the entire blade of grass intact above the cut from the crown of the plant. Grass cut in this manner can be dried in the sun and wind to make hay, which is incredibly useful for home gardening and for keeping backyard chickens or other livestock.
FEEDING LIVESTOCK AND PETS Whether you have a few chickens, a horse, a milk cow or a small herd of goats or sheep, winter fodder and bedding can be the biggest challenge and expense. But if you are making hay from your own lawn by using a scythe, your hay is not only as local as it gets, it is also free. This means you can produce your own eggs, milk (and by extension butter and cheese) and other animal products of the highest quality for very little money.
GROWING GRAIN Small grains are an overlooked crop in the home garden and allotment as well as on small farms. If you are interested in grains other than wheat for baking your own bread, such as emmer, einkorn, spelt or khorasan wheat – all of which are more nutritious, though lower yielding, than wheat – you’ll be able to save money by growing your own. Your grain will essentially be free (think free bread and free chicken feed), you can control how it is grown (free of industrial chemicals, in a polyculture, with no use of fossil fuels, adapted to your local conditions), and you will have a deep-rooted, light-feeding addition to your crop rotation.
To achieve a worthwhile yield in the amount of space available in a home garden, you will probably need to maximize the yield per square foot. The highest yields possible – up to 50 lb (22.7 kg) from about 200 sq ft (18.5 m2), which is about enough for 1½ lb (700 g) of bread per week – are those achieved through bio-intensive gardening, which means growing grain in double-dug beds with lots of added compost. Or, if you have more space and don’t need to have such high yields per square foot, you can use animals such as chickens or pigs to till and fertilize the soil for you. At the field scale, small grains make for a perfect nurse crop for establishing a hay field.
PRODUCING STRAW When you grow your own grains and harvest with the scythe, you also get the long straw that is the seed stalk of the plant. Straw is an immeasurably useful product for the garden and small farm. It is a perfect “brown” ingredient for the compost pile, ideal bedding for livestock and an excellent weed-free mulch material.
GARDENING Whether you garden at home, in an allotment, a community garden or elsewhere, you can use the scythe for quietly performing many tasks with ease. Mow a stand of green manure; clear beds of vegetation; keep paths or border areas mown; and mow marginal areas near fences, gates or walls.
When you step back and look at all you could be doing with the scythe, it may suddenly seem like an indispensable tool for the home and garden. Using a scythe can certainly help you achieve a lot around your lawn, garden or meadows and at a speed that you might find surprising for a hand tool.
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Imagine a town or suburb where nobody has a lawn mower. Walking along on a Saturday morning, from time to time you hear the sound of a whetstone being dragged across metal, a bit like a knife being sharpened, but duller, softer. Later in the day, you walk by again and see cut grass spread evenly across lawns and the occasional haycock, proudly displayed in the front garden, destined for pets and livestock, mulch for the garden or the compost pile.
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There are subtle differences in scythes from one manufacturer to another, but any scythe calling itself an Austrian or European scythe
will consist of the following components: the blade; the scythe ring, which holds the blade to the snath, the instrument used to hold the blade at the appropriate angle and move it through the grass; and the grips, which may or may not be removable and/or adjustable.
The blade itself
has various areas, each with its own name and importance to the mower. The cutting edge is single-beveled and, as you might expect, is the part that actually cuts the grass; the chine gives rigidity to the entire blade and is what, in addition to the person using the scythe, guides the blade through the grass in a semicircle; the point of the blade is angled up from the ground when the scythe is in use; the beard is where the edge ends nearest to the snath; and the tang, with its heel and knob, is the part of the blade that connects with the snath and scythe ring and establishes the angle between blade and snath.
Scythe Assembly
For snaths with one or more detachable grips, start the assembly of the scythe by mounting the grips. Ideally, their position will be adjustable, as they are on the Swiss-made Upper Austrian snath shown here. Notice how the design prevents them slipping along the length of the snath or twisting
. To adjust the position...
