How do you farm without oil?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVv597m848s

Lovely vid of a 14 year old girl demonstrating the *skill* of Scythe work.

When I was a kid ( a looooonnnng time ago...) my Dad used to mow most of our 2-acre lot with a scythe. He had a huge stone wheel mounted on a wooden frame that he cranked by hand to sharpen the scythe. I was really amazed at how much he could cut in a short while... although it seemed like he sharpened the thing quite a bit too and that took some time.

The big drawback to this method is when you hit a rock in the tall grass.

Been there still own the scythe and the tools to sharpen it. gerv sounds like your dad might have had the thick blade American style scythe rather than the thinner blade Austrian style. We have accumulated quite an assortment of mule drawn farm hardware, mainly to preserve it. But it may come into use in the future!

Aaron:)

Awesome vid, thanks for the post. Makes me think of the old hunting cabin, at which a buddy of mine rigged up a push lawnmower on bicycle wheels to cut the grass when it grew tall (since we weren't around constantly to keep it short). Then we used a regular lawn mower to mow it again when it was cut shorter by the Frankenmower. It would've been a LOT faster, and better exercise, to just use a scythe like that... wish my generation had been brought up using those. I'll probably learn someday.

Awesome vid, thanks for the post. Makes me think of the old hunting cabin, at which a buddy of mine rigged up a push lawnmower on bicycle wheels to cut the grass when it grew tall (since we weren't around constantly to keep it short). Then we used a regular lawn mower to mow it again when it was cut shorter by the Frankenmower. It would've been a LOT faster, and better exercise, to just use a scythe like that... wish my generation had been brought up using those. I'll probably learn someday.

You're welcome, glad you liked it. The thing that gets me is you can do that for a long time with the right technique. The girl in the vid was cutting a similar sized swath at eight years old!