Scythe training at West Beckham Old Allotments

Eleven volunteers spent three hours at West Beckham Old Allotments on Saturday June 12th. Most of us were there to receive training in the use of Austrian scythes, while a couple of volunteers did more, much-needed work clearing around the saplings near the pond.

Trevor, John and Nigel smith taught us how to set up a scythe to suit our height, how to fix the blade and how to sharpen the blade – something that has to be done every 5 or so minutes. We then had instruction in scything – something that is not quite as easy as it looks. But we made good progress and managed to do a fair amount of path cutting. However, it was a little chastening to see our tutors going back over the work we had done at the end of the morning to catch all those stray blades that had somehow evaded our cutting!

Two visitors from Norfolk CPRE came to the site for 45 minutes mid-morning and were, I hope, impressed with the work we have done and are doing. It was a lovely sunny morning with a cooling breeze and the whole field looked really good.