Hay Time!

It's that time of year; the grass is long, the sun is shining and it's time to make hay! It's not coppicing, but I thought that it may be of interest to people. This year we had the opportunity to cut the grass in the orchard at work using scythes, turn it by hand and collect it by horse. Scything is something that I have never been involved with before, though after a training course last week and a week of scything I'm absolutely hooked....

A bunch of enthusiastic trainee-scythers

I've done quite a bit of scrub clearance and grass cutting with brush cutters in the past but using the scythe is completely different; It's bliss! There's no noisy engine, fumes or fuel to feed the machine, you don't have to wear a harness or a hard hat and ear defenders.

To keep the scythe sharp it's imprortant to periodically 'peen' the blade, more on this in a future post...

We were fortunate to have a week of good weather last week up here in Norfolk, perfect for drying out the hay. We turned it everyday to ensure that it was dry through. 

Hay gathered up into windrows

Come Thursday afternoon the hay was dry enough to gather up, we had the opportunity to use the Suffolk Punch horse, Bowler for this job. 

Bowler pulling the cart with Richard on the reins. 

Loading the hay.

Going through the process of cutting and harvesting this hay has been a great experience. Though harvesting hay isn't coppicing, to me it represents a similar process. In the past I worked on the chalk grasslands of Kent, so I have a lot of interest in the management of meadows for wildlife. To me managing grassland habitats with the use of scythes is the most wildlife friendly way it can be done! 

This meadow was harvested a little early to allow any wildflower seeds to fall onto the ground. We also have a wildflower meadow that we will be harvesting later in the year. 

Hay being taken back to the farm. Idyllic, right!?