Scying

Scying
A week or two ago, a friend and I were discussing scythes, how much you can cut, how often you sharpen, and so on.

That word was pronounced scye (“sigh”) in my house growing up. My father had both a scye and a sickle and although he would usually have us use the sickle, even as a ten-year-old, I loved to use the scye. Used well, it is like some kind of slow dance movement when you're mowing with it.

I don't know what happened to Dad's scye, but nowadays I own two scyes, or three if the extra blade with one is counted. One was a gift ten or twelve years ago from an old friend, Fred, now sadly dead. It belonged to his father in their Bonavista Bay home and it shows a lot of signs of having been built or rebuilt by hand.

The other (and the extra blade) was a gift from another friend who was not using it. He thinks it may have had a left-handed blade on it because it cut so poorly. Maybe, but I think if I were as handy as Fred's father I'd probably figure out how to reset the blade on the ferrule so that it hung and cut better.

This morning I used Fred's father's old scye and cut I figured about 500 sq ft (uhh, like 50 sq m) in about an hour. If the grass wasn't so wet and lying so flat from age and rain, I probably would have done more. And if my technique was as good as my father's was sixty years ago, I probably would have done more again.

Here is Fred's father's scye, lying in the patch of grass I started with this morning. It's not as good a job as the later patches.

And, by the way, I was sharpening about every five minutes.

Also by the way, my aunt Rose would launch into One Man Went To Mow when Dad was out with his scye. I can't keep that song out of my head when I use it.