For a while now our environment team has been looking for a project in the Summer months, this to compliment its tree planting efforts during the Winter / Spring.
For this year and possibly the future, depending upon what we learn and how we manage to engage, we have settled on the Magnificent Meadows project led by Rachel Remnant of Land Lore Consulting (Formerly of the Wildlife Trust) in collaboration with Alison Talbot from CPRE (Campaign for Rural England).
The intent of this project is to create and properly maintain areas of pristine chalk downland meadow, to enable the rare species that inhabit such areas to thrive, and build up an ecosystem that helps to sustain itself with naturally better water retention, etc.
In order to properly maintain the meadows, they have to be managed carefully, such that the right plants are given the opportunity to thrive, whilst those such as brambles, etc. are gradually reduced in strength to the point where they wither away.
This is where scything comes in, and as you can imagine with such sharp tools, you cannot just be let loose with them.
On Monday, June 17th, Mark Butcher attended an Austrian Scything Course led by Rachel Remnant, an expert in these matters. As you can see from the photo, a certain Craig Newman, who you may know was also on the course, as was Paul Hamilton (Not in the photo, as he’d had to leave by that point), who some of you will know from St. Giles Hill Graveyard.
We were very privileged to be taught in the meadow area in front of Winchester Cathedral, which resulted in many people stopping to watch us, ask what we were up to and even take the odd photo.
Having started the day in his bright yellow Winchester Rotary polo shirt, Mark had to switch to something more plain as he seemed to attract all of the flying insects in the vicinity!
The course involved learning how to:
- Assemble your scythe, such that it “fits” you. This included learning the names of all of the components, e.g. the “Beard”: The widest part of the blade, which is nearest to the shaft and is known as the “Snath”.
- Cut with the scythe.
- Sharpen the scythe, which has to be done very carefully about every 5 minutes! We were loaned cut-resistant gloves.
- Peen the scythe. This is essentially hammering the scythe back into shape after the cutting is completed. It is essentially to deal with any warping of the extremely fine cutting edge resulting from hitting stones, woody plant stems, etc.
The course lasted about 6 hours and was pretty tiring in the heat, which was in the high 20s, but it was a really educational enjoyable day. The key thing now is to get more practice to get used to the swinging montion and hone your technique.
If you would like to follow in Mark’s steps on this, please get in touch with him.
We would like to build up a small team that can contribue to this project on a regular basis. It’s not just about scything. The plant matter that is cut down needs to be dried, raked and finally bailed, the bails being sold to a local sheep breeder.
