JANUARY 2017 | Heather Summers

IF YOU DRIVE around the back roads of the Meander Valley, it’s easy to see it has been a good season for making hay. While you may see a lot of heavy machinery around manufacturing bales in industrial quantities in half a day, you can still find a quiet corner of the neighbourhood where you are more likely to hear the soft swish of a scythe cutting an even swathe through the long grass.

Pausing to hone her blade, Lorraine Clarke is happy to chat about the virtues of scything. “It’s a heavy duty ditch-blade,” she says, “I have to hone it every few minutes when cutting grass like this.”

The grass is thick due to the good growing season, and has to be cut with a narrow swathe, rather than the wider arc she would usually make.

This time of year, Lorraine can cut it in the morning, rake it into rows, let it cure in the breeze and then stack it in a relatively short amount of time.

“You really can make hay in a day,” she says, “if the weather is favourable.”

Lorraine finds it is better to make the hay herself, in small quantities. “You can get the best quality.” The grass is stacked rather than placed in stooks, which works best when cutting grains with sturdier stalks, such as oats.

In this instance, she is using her Italian scythe; with a snaith she made herself from the branch of a tree on her property. She finds the balance and movement of the lightweight Italian model, of which she has several, preferable to the others at her disposal, which includes an Austrian scythe, as well as a couple of English ones that are a little more cumbersome to use. “They can be difficult to manoeuvre, due to their weight. They also require a different posture, where ease of movement is not as good.”

Even in this day of modern design that focuses on efficiency, a scythe is still high-tech when it comes to versatility. “You can mow the lawn, cut an acre of thistles, get through the blackberries.”

Scything has a long history of continuous use. It was at the forefront of agricultural technology for the ancient Romans, and has relatively recently overtaken the sickle in other parts of the world.

In the past, if you ate rye bread or had a thatched roof, a scythe was a necessity.

Social scything has become a community-building exercise in many places, including Tasmania, and scything championships are still relatively common in Europe, with some experts able to wield the blade faster than a brush cutter.

Lorraine appreciates the simplicity and universality of the scythe. “Anyone, anywhere can learn.”

Photo | Mike Moores