Ian Miller

Thanks Permies and R for your time, attention and efforts this week! Thanks to everyone else for your questions, comments and your interest!

Since there's been some confusion about different editions of The Scything Handbook, I hope it's appropriate to clear that up in a thread here.

There are currently two english-language editions of the book:

The North American edition is published by New Society Publishers and is the paperback with the picture of a scythe against a fence.
The rest-of-the-world edition is published by Filbert Press in the UK. It is hardcover and is gray/mustard in color.

Content-wise there is no difference between the two, except for a few blurbs (from Joel Salatin, Hank Will & Ross Mars) that appear in the NA edition.

The book is also coming out in German in February 2017. It'll be called Das Sense-Handbuch and the Swiss publisher Haupt Verlag is putting it out. There's been talk of other foreign language editions, but nothing's official yet. Keep your eyes peeled if you're interested in other languages.

Thanks for your interest!

My feeling is that if scythes are treated with respect (i.e. with the knowledge that you could seriously injure yourself or others) and you know how to handle one safely, a scythe need never injure you or others. This could theoretically be dealt with via a crash course. Accidents happen and there's no way to guarantee no one will ever be injured with this approach, of course. It seems to me that, in general, yes you could use this approach, but that you'll want to also consider the specific person you're dealing with.

You'll also want to consider that a less-experienced person is more likely to use the blade in a way that is not ideal for the blade/how it's been peened.

Hard to know what to tell you without knowing more about the scythe. Are you able to post pictures?

In general: you can switch out blades and the more robust the material to be cut, the more robust the blade should be to avoid damage.

Making hay with scythe and racks means that you don't need a huge herd of whatever livestock to provide an income to make loan payments because you didn't stick a bunch of capital into equipment.

Using racks means you can make hay high-quality hay almost independent of the weather. Because of this, you can make hay little by little, almost every day, and thus never have to deal with huge quantities at once. Slowly this easily adds up to the amount of hay you need to bring a house cow or a small herd of dairy sheep or goats through the winter. One cow or, say, three dairy goats will give you more than enough milk for you and your family and you can sell the rest. Their annual offspring can be raised for meat.

Or maybe a friend of yours has enough land for pasture for a small herd of sheep and you have enough land to make the hay they'd need to get through winter.

When huge capital outlays and loans are out of the picture, the risk level is low and suddenly a lot more is possible than you had imagined from your land.

The basic concept of racks is to get cut grass up off the ground to separate it from rising damp, maximally expose it to drying winds and minimally expose it to rain via rain-shedding caps. There are many different designs, several of which are described in my book. Some of them require that you do an initial tedding before racking. Some of them allow for immediate racking of wet grass. Racks were developed on north-facing rainy slopes in the Alps where haymaking would otherwise be impossible because it would never dry before molding. Racks make haying by hand so much more realistic and ultimately less stressful and labor-intensive.

A bit of a stream-of-consciousness post as I have little time tonight for forum participation! Thanks R for the thread! Free, high-quality hay via racks, made little by little, is what using the scythe is all about, in my opinion!

I like hearing these stories of your real-world experiences, especially on this topic. It can be challenging enough to deal with the learning curve of a new technology/approach/paradigm, but social pressures can be even more difficult. Anyone else out there mowing the lawn in a more-or-less urban setting? The pressure of that tacit assumption that everyone is to mow their lawn "on schedule" is not nothing. Here in NE Iowa, where I've lived over half my life, I'm aware of several cases of people having the authorities called on them for grass that wouldn't have occurred to me was "too long."

On the flip side, haying--or just mowing--your lawn with a scythe is a potential opportunity to get to know your neighbors. Approaching your nearest neighbors with, "here's what I'm planning on doing, here's what the local ordinance says is OK in terms of grass length, so don't worry when you see the lawn getting longer than you're used to. And if you think it's getting too long, let me know and we'll assess the situation together," can break the ice and let them know that you're not just thinking, "f*ck them" (that is, that you're considering their needs). If things are too icy between you and your neighbor, write them a letter, leave them a note or send a text or email stressing their advantages (reduced noise & pollution/smell), what your rights are (check your local ordinance about maximum allowed grass length) and that you'd like to work together on this, giving them an extremely easy way for them to let you know if they're concerned (a number they can text, permission to just come knock on the door, where they should put a note if they want to write one), because who wants a cop showing up at the door?

Reel mowers are, environmentally speaking, wonderful things if you're willing to not only put in the human power to move the thing across the lawn (not that all gas mowers are easy to move!), but also mow more frequently, because they get a LOT harder to push when the lawn is even a little bit too long. (Maybe some models are better than others...anyone aware of a reel mower that does well in relatively long grass?) With the scythe, on the other hand, it's ideal to let the grass grow to the maximum-socially-acceptable length, which means less mowing than reel and gas mowers.

Hi Thekla, you might consider perusing the assortments that various vendors have on offer to familiarize yourself with what's out there and get a sense for what might be right for your specific needs: http://onescytherevolution.com/scythe-blades.html; https://scythesupply.com/blades.html

What may also potentially be useful for you is a blade with a point made to allow the blade to glide past stones without damaging the blade, such as the Falci 187: http://onescytherevolution.com/scythe-blades.html

Maureen: Thanks! I hope you've been able to find some useful information here.

Devin: I'm not necessarily only here till Friday, it's just that I've committed to putting some time into posting every day this week to talk about scythes and scything.

"Rosa": I'm happy for you! I hope you find my book useful!

Peter: serendipity strikes again!