By Daniel Parlour, Scottish Countryside Junior Ranger
This summer I attended a two day Meadow Management course organized by Species on the Edge. Some of the work we are doing at the moment in Dunnet Community Forest includes scything the meadow, so I wanted to learn how to use a scythe so I could take part in this. Our instructor, Heather Beaton, who is the senior ranger for Kyle and Lochalsh Community Trust, guided us through the course at St. John’s Pool, a bird reserve north-east of Dunnet Bay.
Getting the scythe ready.
We first learnt how to put an Austrian scythe together. The main body of the scythe which is a long stick, is called the snath. You attach two small handles to the snath, after that you attach the long blade of the scythe onto the snath.
Despite the occasional showers of rain we managed to continue. Next we were taught how to maintain our scythes. First we needed to peen our scythe blades. Peening is a process where you hammer a jig which vibrates against the blade’s edge creating small indentations that help to sharpen it. It is a rather complicated process so it’s quite hard to explain, but it takes a lot of hammering and my arms were dead afterwards. However, you do have a seat to sit on whilst you’re doing it so that helps. There is a good video showing peening here.
The next thing to learn was how to sharpen the blade of the scythe during use. Peening only has to be done every year or so, but sharpening has to be done after every six minutes of use, just to keep the blade easily gliding through the foliage. All that has to be done is rub the sharpening stone along the blade, but the stone must be kept wet, so you keep it in a little sleeve full of water attached to your clothes.
Scything
Then, with our scythes ready for action we could start scything. It took a while to get used to the scythe but I soon managed to start cutting grass!
Learning about Meadow Management
The following week we headed to Mey village hall for a talk about meadow management theory. I won’t go into too much detail about this because I could go on for hours, but it was all very fascinating and I learnt a lot. Such as, did you know that one of the reasons we have lost 97% of UK wildflower meadows since the 1930’s is down to the fact that many of the places they originally stood is now grazed all year, or cut for silage?
Here are some of the things we learned:
Most wildflowers don’t like nutrient rich soil, and, because our livestock is pooing on all of the grazing land the soil becomes more nutrient rich, so the wildflowers can no longer grow. However, our work in the meadow at Dunnet will help many different rare or struggling species to survive and thrive.
And don’t forget the raking!
After the theory, we headed back to St. John’s pool and raked up our entire scythe cutting from the previous week. Something that many people don’t realise is, raking a meadow after it has been scythed, is just as important as scything it in the first place. As I spoke about earlier, wildflowers don’t like nutrient rich soil, so leaving the cut grass to rot would be terrible. It took a long time, and lots of grass filled wheelbarrows, but we did it. The area we had cut looked great, and considering we were all amateurs, I think we had done pretty well.
It is amazing learning an entirely new skill that will stick with me for life. If there’s one tip I can give it is this, “If you just can’t get it, keep practicing.” The more I’ve scythed the better I have got, it’s a sure fire way to improve your method.
Gladly, no-one has lost their feet YET!
