Scything the Winter Rye

This past weekend I harvested my winter rye. I live on a 1/2 acre property, and the last two years I've been planting the area between my dwarf fruit trees with winter rye. Well - two years ago with winter rye, and this past year with fallen winter rye from the past season and a mix of various broadleaf plants and grasses that have come up. I've embraced the wild violets, fleabanes, evening primroses, catnip, clovers, and even creeping charlie that has come up - since all of these are far superior to typical grass lawns for fruit tree health. Various lumps of comfrey are in there two - intentionally, which can be clipped back a few times a year, and added to the mulch at the foot of the fruit trees to give them a little nutrient boost.

But this is supposed to be about scything...

Before getting to that, I'll mention the sickling. Because I like to use the extra straw left over, I grow winter rye, which like older varieties of wheat, has tall 6-8' stalks. I first snipped off the top of the stalks and grain heads with a hand sickle (pretty easy to pick-up anywhere) and put them on a tarp to dry.

Then, after the fun part, the REALLY fun part.

If you've never used an Austrian-style scythe, you might not believe that something so light and ergonomic could exist for mowing grass with hand tools. They are truly a joy to use. Being a bit of a scythe-geek, mine's even custom made to my height.

Austrian scythes have a straight snath, not a curved ones, and far lighter (but very strong) blades. They are designed so that you slice through the grass while using a gentle side to side motion, keeping the blade on the ground. They are not like the typical British or North American scythes with curved handles that you have to actively whip back and forth with a lot of physical labour. A good place to learn more about Austrian scythes is Scythe Supply,  where I bought my scythe, and the sharpening tools that are so essential.)

A short article about the growing use of scythes in Britain got me thinking about mowing my regular lawn with a scythe, which I'd always thought of as too difficult, but after reading a few online articles about this, I may try and learn. Shorter grass is a bit harder to get a uniform look on when you're first starting. 

So, the final stage of harvesting the rye was whipping the seed heads against the inside of a steel garbage pail until all the seeds end up in the bottom - which is actually way easier than it sounds - especially compared the other way of flailing grains with hand tools, which entails whipping a piece of wood attached to the end of a broom handle against the grain heads to shake them out.

And I've ended up with two large bowls full of rye kernels, which just need a bit of winnowing to get the smaller and light-weight particles out.

I am eager to grind this up into flour and try making my own sour-dough bread...stay tuned.