In our general attempt to learn about moving towards an active ‘being and living off-less-future’, my wife, Romola and myself public-transported ourselves on 21st of July to the first Lancashire and NW Scythe Festival near Rossendale in Lancashire. (bike/train/train/train/bus/bike!).
Simon Fairlie who writes eloquently about how slow planning authorities are in allowing people to live a low-impact- life style lead the course and introduced us to the ‘Rolls Royce’ of scythes made in Austria. He
believes in promoting the use of scythes partly for the joy and satisfaction of mastering their use and also as part of forward planning, when, sooner than we realise, commercial exploitation of finite oil reserves will come to an end.

So, human powered tools may, once again, become the norm.

We were hugely impressed with the continental scythes and have placed an order. (Perhaps they’ll be made in the UK one day). We use the modern UK made scythe regularly, but it is a primitive tool compared to the sophistication of its Austrian cousin! We are currently scything grass in a traditional orchard, which we have established over the years, and turning the grass into hand-made hay for the goats.

This in contrast to five acres of hay, which is made using modern machinery. Last week I spent many hours in a fair weather window converting the cut grass into organic hay. With much teasing, cajoling and turning I eventually had it at the ready, beautiful, crisp, sweet smelling, and herb-rich. Phoned the contractor to say ”Quick, come and bale the hay as soon as you can. The sky is darkening fast.” The baler and the rain came through the gate at the same instant! Write off! I ‘rained’ too. Later the same day we were fortunate to get the black-plastic-baler-boys to wrap up the dampened hay, so the crop was saved. For me it was a bewildering site seeing vast machines saving the situation!

It makes me feel we need to have a serious debate, based on the above comment about how we realistically prepare ourselves for a post oil world. At the moment I can see no evidence of a meaningful shift to non-mechanised word unfolding.