Free scything lessons

I've often heard that expression, "Everything old is new again."  This summer I got the chance to put a farmer's spin on this saying. I've also discovered a way to make at least one long-abandoned "conventional" farming technique efficient in a modern world. Practicing a half-hour of daily scything can save money on gym membership fees, health costs associated with the build-up of arterial plaque, and fossil fuel expenses. Turns out this cost-saving and health promoting practice is actually not that difficult, safer, and an effective alternative to pulling ditches with a tractor every spring.  

 

Except for the Amish over on the Tongue River north of Ashland, we in Big Horn County encounter few farmers serious about conventional farming. By "conventional" I mean the farming technology that was passed down from many generations of fathers and mothers before us. These techniques used little or no fossil fuels (gas, diesel, or coal). For thousands of years muscle energy was more than adequate for food production.  Today, however, physical labor is viewed as a quaint, relatively useless source of energy for farming.

 

I wonder whether it might be time to revisit some of that traditional knowledge we have abandoned over the last couple generations. Couldn't we reincorporate some of the old techniques to supplement our more modern (and less healthful) ways? I guess it's up to those of us who had exposure to conventional methods as youths to bring back some still useful approaches. 

 

More than fifty years ago my grandfather planted some valuable muscle memory into my adolescent arms and back. Swinging a scythe was definitely not my idea of how to be productive back then. I resisted his lesson in favor of an internal combustion motor driving a whirling steel blade. It seemed ludicrous to me that anyone would brag about being able to cut lawn grass with a scythe as Grandpa and my uncles did. What a waste of energy, I thought, when we have such powerful tools at our disposal.

 

Fast-forward sixty years.  I had an irrigation ditch clearing problem to solve.   Naturally, I saw this problem as one of finding the right technology. Off I went and bought a wheeled string mower from Randy at True Value. I painstakingly rebuilt the mount of the belt-driven string rotor into a position nine inches further forward, so dipping the handles would raise the spinning strings sixteen inches higher along our irrigation ditch walls. This successfully made mowing our lateral ditch walls easier and faster than using a hand-held string mower. It certainly was an improvement, but it still was strenuous work.

 

A month ago I discovered my old scythe.  I found the place in the blade I damaged thirty years ago learning to cooperate with that tool instead of forcing it into the weeds needing cutting. I applied my Dremel™ tool to the weld I had made and never really shaped correctly, and sharpened it the way I was taught almost a half-century ago. A month ago I carried it expectantly to our grass-infested lateral off Farmer's Ditch, braced my feet and began reviving what was left of my scything muscle memory.

 

It worked. I was simply amazed and quickly became obsessed. I couldn't quit, until, almost a hundred yards and a half hour later, my cell rang. Knowing my son was coming home that weekend, I saved the rest of the ditch for a family scything event.

I gave lessons to my two grown sons, as my grandfather had done with me. They were as surprised as I to find how efficient this manual process was. The time investment was about the same as running the big blade behind a tractor to pull ditches. Scything was actually less frustrating when working sodded in ditches like ours, where there is a tendency to pull the point too deep or skim too high, losing the accurate slope needed for effective ditch flow. Even more importantly, we didn't need to drive to the Hardin community center after work to pump iron.  

 

So here's the deal. Free scything lessons are available at Greenwood Farm. Just search Youtube on line for any scything video, then go to Randy or Dean, hardware stores on Center Street, and order a genuine old-fashioned scythe with hardened steel for honing to a razor edge. This musician-writer-farmer is offering free beginner lessons in scything, with a real honest irrigation ditch in which to practice. Stop in even if you can't find a scythe. If you quickly learn to keep the heel down you won't break mine like I did. But do please check your garage attic and let me know.

 

graberdb@gmail.com

David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034

It’s the government again.

Here they come again, telling us what we can and can't do with our own natural resources.  This time it's about coal, that apparently boundless energy resource enriching our nation. Now the government, via President Obama, is telling us what to do about our coal.  Increased environmental safety measures associated with extraction might reduce profits and could affect employment in our region.  Here's where the confusion comes in.   Most of us are absolutely certain we want money from coal extraction, the more the better.  Many of us are also concerned about carbon loading the air we breathe. Meanwhile billions of tons of coal pass through Big Horn County via Burlington Northern tracks en route to the troposphere encircling our planet.

 

This brings us to our ongoing dilemma about what we should sacrifice in immediate benefits to ensure a survivable future. I grew up hearing stories about the bad old days of the dust bowl from my farming grandparents. Back in Kansas, in the early thirties, everyone knew that the government was confused. They were actually paying farmers to turn up clods of dirt in sterile fields across the plains. My grandpa knew it was nuts, but decided to make a little extra money with his moldboard plow and mule. He had a family to support and the drought virtually stopped income from farming. He draped the Hames collar over his mule's neck and hooked the traces to the plow. He leaned on the handles as he trudged back and forth across the long gone wheat field, turning up clods.

 

He knew it was pointless effort. Nothing could grow in those dry clods. The local Ag agent maintained that the clods would slow or stop the drifting dust. Most in the little Mennonite church on the prairie agreed this was a futile endeavor. It was already early July, getting hotter and drier, making plowing and planting a ludicrous effort. But money talked. He worked in the hot morning sun and earned the government-subsidized check calculated by the acres he plowed, as the government agent counted. The government was giving, and he might as well be on the take.

 

As he plowed, my grandfather recalled the days when lush wheat fields flourished before the rains stopped. He grieved for the loss of the green fertility and early prosperity of the plains. Now even the windmills struggled to find water for the few mangy critters and crazy people left on the prairie who actually owned some land.  "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," intoned the preachers, leaving the farmers and the Chicago grain futures investors and bankers unaccountable for the environmental disaster of the American West Dustbowl.

 

As it turned out those crazy government bureaucrats were right. Those farmers, like my grandfather, played a vital role in preserving our national bread basket. The short-term solution worked. Billions of topsoil particles stopped bouncing into the air and landing in ditches and rivers where they didn't belong. The longer-term solution was deployed the following spring, and it also proved effective. New hedge rows were planted every square mile by the Civilian Conservation Corps (same government program that built bricks for Big Horn County Schools at CCC camps near Busby). These hedges supported the summer plowing efforts. Tiny particles of SiO2, the main ingredient of soil, no longer converted into clouds of dust, creating dust storm convections with ferocious winds.   Those incredible storms had produced not just overwhelming dust, but also lightning, thunder, hair-razing electricity in the air, and fires where vegetation still existed. As my grandparents told me, the dust was sometimes so thick one could hardly see a hand held hand in front of one's face, depressing metabolism in all breathing creatures and causing untold deaths from dust pneumonia.  

 

Later my grandparents moved on to Oklahoma where they once again found fertile ground and were able to make a living from the land.  As a lad, I recall finding the old mould-board complete with wooden handles as I was on my way to catch frogs in the spring. Later that evening my Grandpa told us about plowing up the dirt clods in Kansas with a plow like that. To this day, I'm ever grateful for the efforts of those farmers who created a better world for me.  Who knows what would have happened to my mother's family (and my own future) without the foresight of those government agents to mitigate environmental damage from bad farming practices.  Nobody believed it would help at the time and would only lead to more ruin and destruction. Their persistence paved the way for real changes that have promoted sound agriculture to this day.  

 

Maybe we should consider what is being proposed now to mitigate the effects of climate change. Given my family's history, the future economic toll of severe environmental damage is a much scarier for me than short term reduction in coal profits.  Let's consider the future of our nation's soils and waters, and how much we're willing to do to protect our grandchildren's grandchildren.

 

greenwoodback40.blogspot.com.

graberdb@gmail.com

--
David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034