Reed Cutting in Norfolk

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Scythes don’t come out much in the Winter months. So it was a pleasure to combine our winter Scythe Association meeting with reed cutting at Heacham Saltings on the North Norfolk coast.

Traditionally the reed is cut and gathered for thatching. For the Scythe to lay the reed where it can easily be gathered into bundles we attach a simple cradle made from a suitable rod of flexible fresh (green) wood like Willow or Hazel which helps to lay the reed all in the same direction in the windrow.

Saturday morning was bright but bitterly cold and getting down into the reed bed provided almost the only prospect of shelter as well as warmth through plenty of exercise. Our host Richard Brown led the way in and explained the work needed (the Saltings is managed under an environmental stewardship grant and mowing of blocks in the reed bed is a part of the conservation management).

It wasn’t long before we were all getting to grips with mowing the 6ft reeds.

The reed bed had already been drained down to allow us to mow the reeds but ditches, channels and pools of water remain and for those wearing long wellingtons or short waders it afforded the chance to experience some underwater mowing.

John Letts took the opportunity to bundle some of the mown reed.

But as the reed was being cut for conservation management rather than thatching most could be forked into piles at the edges of the bed.

Before too long our enthusiastic team of mowers had made good inroads into the bed and cleared enough reed to complete the task.

I’ve been making some traditional English steam bent shafts over the last year and this was my first change to try out one of my new snathes (on the right). I’d hurriedly fitted it out with a random assortment of ironwork and handgrips (nibs) on Thursday before travelling to Norfolk and was a little worried that it might not survive the encounter. In the event the scythe proved to be more equal to the task, as it’s little on the large and heavy side for reed mowing, though it’s not finished yet and needs plenty of tweaking to get it optimised.

Suitably warmed and exercised we retired to Richard’s beach house to take in the views over the Wash and for our formal Scythe Association winter meeting, a short affair followed by evening of long conversations fuelled by Simon’s excellent blue cheese, plenty of beer and I seem to remember that a bottle of my ‘Sloe Vodkin’ was involved as well.

On Sunday Richard has another block of reed for us to mow, this time at the other end of the saltings. An opportunity to blow away the cobwebs and finish the job.

All too soon the job was done and it was time to take my leave. Back to the real world. I love the work that I do, but I will carry with me the memory of the places I’ve been, things I’ve done and the people I’ve seen over the last three days. Thank you  – It’s been like a breath of fresh air to recharge my batteries in the middle of winter.

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Wimpole Hall – Eastern Counties Scythe Championships

The competition mowing season reaches its climax with the Eastern Counties Championships at Wimpole Hall. Simon Damant, Jim McVittie and the estate team at Wimpole Hall put a lot of effort into setting up a great event and despite the unruly weather – you can see the fuzzy spots made by raindrops on the lens – we mowed off the heavy grass in front of the Hall in fine style.

Wimpole has a lot of grass so it’s possible to lay out a range of mowing events – the Quarter Acre, Eighth Acre, Team mowing, 10×10 and the main event – at least for the spectators – the 5x5m sprints. The results of the competitions can be found on Simon Damants Wimpole Blog here:

– Wimpole Championship results blog .

Though the bigger plots reveal more about your mowing ability the 5×5 m plots are the main competition for the overall winner. It is always a closely fought competition and I find the wiry grass of Wimpole’s main avenue a hard challenge to mow quickly with good quality using my traditional English Scythe.

It doesn’t take much to lose your rhythm and a few seconds does count in the sprint. Last years winner Ded snapped his scythe snathe clean in two during the team mowing competition – that doesn’t help!

With heavier grass than last year and the rain flattening the grass as we watched – the plot you are allocated can make a lot of difference to time and quality. The heavy grass and the rain opened up the field (if you’ll pardon the pun) and placed  a few mowers in contention to win the 5×5. Who would it be?

The overall Winner was Phil Batten, an accomplished master of the scythe, who mowed his plot in a time of 2.42 with an excellent quality of 7.5. But Phil wasn’t the fastest.

Richard Brown mowed his plot in 2.41 a second faster than Phil though his 6.5 quality put him in third place. But Richard wasn’t the fastest either!

Gemma Suggitt mowed a superb race with a time of 3.02 and a quality of 7 putting her in Fourth place overall and winning the Ladies Cup.  Well done Gemma – an excellent mow! But Gemma wasn’t the fastest either!

I expect you can guess where this is heading!  Yes, I mowed my plot in 2:17, the fastest time, and taking into account my not quite so excellent, but not quite crap either, quality I managed to come in second overall (just) as well as winning the English Scythe Cup.

OK so what’s the big deal?  I mowed the fastest time and came second overall and won the English Scythe Cup at the same time. Well generally the English scythe has been regarded as a big handicap in comparison with it’s lightweight, agile and high performance Austrian cousin.

Somehow that doesn’t seem quite right to me, we used the tool for centuries and I can’t believe we’d have continued to use it if it was really that bad. So perhaps it’s us that can’t make the best of the tool rather than the tool being to blame? I’ve spent the last few years relearning my ability to use a scythe and apply it to the traditional English Scythe. One of the most fascinating things to me is that we have actually forgotten how to use the tool well and rediscovering it is a research project with a hefty dose of experimental archaeology.

Whatever! I’m not trying to imply that the traditional English Scythe is the equal of the modern 21st century Austrian Scythe. It isn’t.  It’s like comparing a modern Audi (vorsprung durch ‘Scythe’) with Inspector Morse’s  MKII jag. One is high performance for the money, does exactly what it says on the tin and works straight out of the box. The other is heavy, shakes and rattles a lot, great when it goes though it spends most of the time in the garage being tinkered with – but you know what – It’s got Soul!

I’m hoping that the work I’ve been doing  will help raise the profile of the English scythe and more people will learn to enjoy using them well on the odd occasion if not all the time. On the down side I’m already noticing that the price of rusty old wormeaten English scythes is rising but I won’t be unhappy if they get put to good use rather than on the wall of a pub.

An enormous thank you to Simon, Jim, Paul, Neil, Dan, Peter, Albert and all the team at Wimpole who made it such a great occasion! Well done.

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Somerset Scythe Festival 2014

Last Sunday Thorney Lakes near Muchelney in Somerset hosted the 10th Scythe Fair and Championships. I spent most of the week on the site helping with the organisation and preparing for the championships.

The Radio 4 daily programme Farming Today broadcast a short article on the Scythe Fair and the podcast is still on the site for another a few hours in case you are inclined to hear what they made of it.

Here is a link to the Podcast webpage for Farming Today – Scroll down to the Tuesday 17th June programme for the scythe fair article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/farming

How did I do in the Championships? You’ll have a wait a little to find out!

 

 

 

 

 

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An Old English Snathe

 

Last weekend we had storm force winds and driving rain – a shame because I was at the Bodgers Ball near Herstmonceux in East Sussex. More of that later. All change this weekend as bright blue sky with a strange yellow orb in it appeared just in time for my first ‘learn to mow with a scythe’ course of the year at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum. No I don’t know why the cart is in the field either – bit of a corny photo but there you go.

 

Over the last few years we’ve been introducing the scythe as an effective mowing tool at the museum. Each year we are able to take on a little bit more with the scythe as we train more people up to use them and they gain in experience. I’ve been running the courses in the orchard. With eight people on the course I was kept busy and didn’t get to take any photos until after the clearing up.

 

Fine though they were it wasn’t really the people or the quality of their new found mowing skills that caught my attention – but this old scythe snathe brought along by Kevin Tillett who was on the course. Next to it for comparison on the right is a more wiggly snathe , also not an American snathe, but an English branch snathe .

The blade is forged and relatively short- around 20 inches. The snathe is of an old English style much straighter than those commonly seen nowadays – many of which are American imports – and similar to those sometimes known as Yorkshire Snathes or Yorkshire Scythe Poles. Apparently he found the old scythe in the cellar of their cottage at Forest Row (which is in the middle of Ashdown Forest) when they moved in some years ago.

Despite the prevalence of the American snathes in collections and junkshops it is beginning to become apparent that there remained a wide diversity of English Scythe styles which I find fascinating and I’m keen to learn more despite the lack of recorded information.

I’d speculate that this scythe was used on the heaths of Ashdown Forest, most likely for the cutting of bracken (the fern) as bedding and/or heather as winter fodder.

 

As well as being a straighter pole the snathe is fitted quite heavy, rather brutal, ironwork and a short crank on the bottom handle. The tang passes right through the wooden grip and is simply beaten over in much the same way as a billhook tang. This style of pole and ironwork is similar to one in the museum collection – the only two that I have seen so far. The ironwork on the bottom of the pole is present but the scythe ring is missing which prevents the blade being fitted. Shame as it would have been great to try it out.

 

I think I’ll stop going on about the fascinating scythe snathe before I lose the plot entirely.  The warm weather is bringing on the wildflowers and the small meadow that we will be cutting by hand for hay later in the summer is a mass of colour at the moment.

The cottage gardens at the museum are also looking colourful in the spring sunshine. I find it hard work teaching all day, but the weather helped and it seemed only too short a time before the day and the course were over with everyone keen to go home and try out their newfound mowing skills.

 

 

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Weekend at Wimpole – Rural Crafts and the Eastern Counties Scythe Championships 2013

Warning: A long post – so you might want to just flick through the pictures! Otherwise put the kettle on, get yourself a mug full and settle down to read on

In case you are wondering I do still have a polelathe – several in fact – and I used one yesterday. But summer has finally arrived, the wildflower meadows are in full colour and on the commons the bracken is growing as if there’s no tomorrow –  you could be forgiven for thinking that I’d forgotten all about my lathe at this time of year.

So with my  Scythe over my shoulder grim reaper style I set off for Wimpole Hall again for the Eastern Counties Scything Championships and some spoon carving to boot.

I’d been asked to run a spoon carving course again for beginners. Spoon carving is great fun and it doesn’t need a lot more than an axe and a couple of knives and once again the polelathe was left behind. I am getting polelathe withdrawal symptoms – occasionally my leg starts quivering uncontrollably – but moving on swiftly.

The spoon course seemed to go well and as often happened turned itself into a freeform afternoon/evening of whittling wood for all comers. And I use the term whittling advisedly and specifically. Not everyone seemed to have got the idea of a spoon, especially our Albanian friend Ded who seemed more focused upon removing wood quickly rather than the form and shape of the wood thats left behind.

Making up for Ded’s savage assault on the wood was John, who had not carved a spoon before and came on the course. I think his precision metalworking background is more than a little revealed by the attention to detail of his first spoon. Well done John – a worthy winner of the Spoon category in the craft competition as well.

Somehow John also found time over the weekend to fix the backdoor of my landrover (thank you John), linish the axe that Magnus made me (thank you again John), compete in the mowing and also bring down his vintage Field Marshal tractor to demonstrate the finger bar towed mower.

Not before time we’re onto the mowing. Unlike the Somerset championships where the area of grass is strictly limited by the site, at Wimpole hall there is a 3 mile avenue leading to the hall which is all unfertilised flower meadow! Mower’s heaven – or it can be hell if you leave it too late in the day and it’s all going wrong.

Simon Damant has been pushing us to take advantage and mow 1/4 acre plots and not just the tiny 5x5m plots which we usually compete to mow. Chris Riley mowed 1/4 acre using his straight snathe – and if there was an award for sheer mowing style – Chris would have won in my opinion.  This year several of us stepped up to the 1/4 acre challenge – and I’m very glad that I took the opportunity – I learnt a lot about my scythe and myself mowing out mowing for hours in the gentle rain on the Friday evening. Three hours and three minutes to be precise.

Plenty of other challenges at the weekend. How about trying your hand at shearing a sheep – the traditional way with a pair of clippers or sheep shears. Not satisfied with his assault with a knife on a lump of wood Ded had a go and Simon showed him how to do it.

The weekend allowed me to catch up with Magnus the sword smith. Basically if it has a sharp edge – Magnus will have made it and if by some chance he hasn’t – it won’t be long before he has. You may have seen a lot of his blades alreadywithout knowing it as Magnus does a lot of work for film and TV programmes making reproduction or original designs. As a result Magnus has an approach to tool design which I find fascinating and which allows his creative bent a fairly free reign. It’s always interesting to see what Magnus is upto and this time was no exception – he’s been making some lovely little carving axes.

Here’s one with a traditional ‘Kentish’ style to the head but with some tomahawk influence in the weight, shaping and the tapered eye socket. Couldn’t resist buying it. He’s also made a small bearded carving axe – you’ll see more of it before long as I also bought it on the spot.

The problem with the Sunday afternoon competition plots, particularly the 5x5m championships is that there is a lot of nervous waiting around and then a couple of minutes of violent activity. I’m not a sprinter by nature and so the larger plots seem to suit me much better.

Nerves didn’t seem to worry Chris Earl much though. A retired farmer (if you can retire as a farmer) from Grantham, Chris brought along his Rumanian Scythe but I talked him into showing off his skills with my vintage English Nash Universal Scythe and he entered the competitions.

He also seems to have the knack of resting on the scythe. I think you’d have to agree that the English Scythe is so much better as a leaning post than the Austrian scythe?

A few more scything photos to prove that we did more than stand around photogenically resting on them. Arthur was a newcomer to the scythe at the start of the weekend but produced a good showing mowing in the competion being awarded best novice for his 10×10 plot.

 Andi Rickard mowing her 10x10m plot. Andi appears to be powered up by a secret weapon – home made pemmican. Rocket fuel for mowing I reckon. No wonder she’s the ladies champion, though it’s always a closely fought battle with the tricky grass at Wimpole. Having tried the pemmican I am converted and I just need to find some time to make some!

Richard Brown competes hard with his Austrian Scythe and has in the recent past been the overall winner at Wimpole. He gave it everything and produced a fast time with an excellent quality of cut. A time of 1:49 and a quality of 7.5 – which under the conditions is an amazing combination of speed and quality.

But in the end Wimpole’s evil little fescue grasses on a hot and windy Sunday afternoon brought him to his knees – literally.

Is Richard having a quick snooze or should we call an ambulance? Luckily Richard recovered swiftly just in time to take some more punishment.

Hard work all this standing around in the sun leaning on your scythe and waiting for something to happen.

So a great weekend, in really good company. Thank you everyone who made it so special! Oh and did I tell you I won a cup? I prefer the medals – but if there’s a cup on offer it would be rude to refuse wouldn’t it?

Having won the cup twice now, I am starting to look forward to somebody coming forward who can wield an English Scythe faster and perhaps more importantly with keep the quality at speed – though I don’t expect to yield without a fight.

Meanwhilst more scything ‘Bling’ to add to the collection, with a couple of spoons and the Magnificent Magnus Made small bearded carving axe. Come and try it and maybe Magnus will Make you one as well?

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Where have all the Wild Flowers gone? – Scything in Longdown meadow

Where have all the wildflowers gone? For some reason hay meadows, or rather the lack of them and the consequent lack of  variety in our wildflowers have been hitting the news in the last few weeks. So last weekend it was a pleasure to be teaching mowing by scythe and grassland management in one of the traditional wildflower meadows on top of the North Downs near Guildford.

The part of the meadow we use for the course is managed by Transition Guildford with support from Surrey Wildlife Trust and used to grow local produce. Over the last year they’ve been busy extending the orchard as well as managing the polytunnel and vegetable beds but that still leaves a lot of grassland to be managed. Somehow I could sense that everyone on the course was keen for me to get the health & safety and the scythe setup out of the way so they could get to grips with the grass.

This is the third year we’ve been running the course, cutting on the site and the sward ( the mat of grasses and flowers making up the turf) is responding to the management by getting less dense and easier to mow.

You may be wondering why we’re cutting the grass in late June whilst the wildflowers are still at their height and some of the annuals have yet to set seed?  Unlike a modern industrial farming operation we can’t cut all of the meadow at one go, in fact we’re only cutting a small patch for the course. We’re starting early but we won’t finish the job until early September when we hold another course and we’ve left most of the meadow and all of the areas with annual flowers still to set seed – particularly the Yellow Rattle. Yellow Rattle is now rare but used to be widespread and as it’s parasitic it weakens the grass in the sward allowing the wildflowers to compete  more effectively.

Despite our keen scything team the most important part of the job is not the mowing, it’s the raking, forking and barrowing the mown grass away from the meadow. Removing it helps to reduce the  level of  nutrients in the soil and now more wildflowers will be able to take advantage of  bare patches and less aggressive grass to seed and thrive. Rachel supervised the growing mound of grass and slowly moulded it into an enormous sculpture. The mown grass will be used as a mulch for the vegetable beds and orchard trees so the nutrients are removed from one area and then used where they will be of more value in producing fruit and vegetables.

It can be hard on a course to finish a job but this group seemed to have no problem making a neat finish to the work and the rain even managed to hold off for us. Next stop is Wimpole Hall this weekend for the Eastern Counties Scything championships.

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Did I Mention I won a Medal – West Country Scythe Championships 2013

It’s that time of year again. I’ve spent the last week helping to setup and then competing at the West Country Scythe Championships, held on a meadow near Muchelney deep on the Somerset Levels.

When I arrived on Tuesday afternoon it was to a nearly empty field. But not for long. Just like the Bodgers Ball there is a lot of work that goes on in the background to prepare for the Green Fair and Scythe Championships on Sunday. But the West Country Championship is effectively the national event and it’s a long, long apprehensive wait through the week  for the finals of the Scything competition on the Sunday afternoon.

Time to get to work, helping with Simon’s erection, a traditional pole and canvas marquee, very much in keeping with the ethos of the event.

Unfortunately we can’t just wade in and enjoy mowing the meadow – much of the work is mowing neat 1metre (yes I do think they are 3foot 3inch) paths to mark out the competition plots. Mowing 1 metre paths is a strange practice discipline for the competition.

As  more and more people arrive through the week the work goes faster and faster. With the good weather and an experienced crew, thanks mainly to Jim and Chris we got through the setting out of the plots in good time leaving plenty of time for chatting with friends and renewing old acquaintances.

We produced plenty of mown grass for Pedro the Hay to barrow around to the Hay making competition arena. More of the hay making competition when I get hold of some photos – as someone placed a megaphone in my hands I ended up comparing on the day and unable to take photos.

To my delight Mike Abbott turned up to demonstrate steam bending of some English Snathes (Scythe handles or poles).  As you may know I’ve been increasingly captivated by the Old English Scythe and promptly wound Mike and his demonstration into the talk on the English Scythe on Saturday Afternoon. I’ll put another post up on Mike’s snathe making demonstrations soon.

The English Snathe has a characteristic curvy shape very different from the more angular continental scythe snathes and to our knowledge English style snathes have not been made for a good few years, decades even as the last English Scythe blades were made in the 1970’s and most of those had American Snathes. So it’s particularly exciting to see Mike steam bending a snathe and I’m very keen to give it a go in the near future. But first I’ve got to prove that the English Scythe is every bit as good as it’s upstart cousin the Austrian Scythe.

Talking of which, the last of the mowing around the competition plots allowed me some practice with my English Scythe (photo courtesy of Steve Tomlin). This year I’ve acquired an old Isaac Nash Crown blade on an American Ash snathe which I’ve spent the last few weeks restoring to working order from a rusty length of iron and delaminating dry splintered lump of wood. The blade has been straightened with help from my friend Martin Fox, a blacksmith at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum and it’s starting to cut much better now I’ve ground the edge back.  My aim is to continue to improve the performance of the English Scythe. But will the Scythe and I be up to competing on Sunday?

As more Scythers are drawn in by the hot sunny (if a little windy) weather the number of scythes parked on the rack starts to swell rapidly.

Good weather on Sunday and Green Fair and Scythe Championships draw in the crowds. Taking part in the Team Mowing, Heats, Hay Making competition and at the last the finals I don’t have much time to take photos but at least it keeps me busy and I don’t have too much time to fret with everything coming down to a couple of minutes and a single chance in the finals.

Much of the remaining time is spent in nervous preparations for the final race. The Austrian Scythes are being carefully prepared by peening (hammering) the edge to a razor sharpness. Chris Riley shows how to peen with plenty of style.

Sadly I don’t have any photos of the event so I’ll cut to the chase and reveal that the Scythe and I did alright. I beat the record for the English scythe at the competition by around 70seconds, from 3mins 20secs down to 2mins 06 seconds, in the process successfully defending my title as English Scythe Champion.

Can I do that acceptance speech now? I’d like to thank my mother…………..oh ok maybe not the full speech then. But it was great to work with such a great crew on the Setup, Jim, Chris, Gemma, Beth, Simon(the Guvna), Stewart, Al, Ed,Pedro the Hay and uncle tom cobbley and…… whoops there I go again. Then to compete alongside Mike, George (deservedly the new Scythe Champion), Simon, Ded, Andy and Andi (Women’s Champion) – well done folks it was a great contest.

I know the English Scythe is capable of going both faster and with higher quality (even if I’m not) and let’s face it, it’s high time that we showed that the English Scythe is not just a museum piece and capable of performing at the same level as the Austrian Scythe. This year is a good step in that direction and I’ll get another chance to show what it can do at the Eastern Counties Championship in a couple of weeks time.

Oh and did I mention that I won a medal?

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End the Winter Season with some Mowing in the Orchard

The Winter Season is when we do most of the conservation work on the Lynchmere Commons. The volunteer gang has worked hard this season and despite the near continual rain and snow we’ve been very busy. Now the nesting season is suddenly in full swing (as it’s not snowing this week) we can stand back and admire all of the cutting, felling, burning, thinning, scraping, digging,filming, laying, fencing and mending we’ve been doing but before we do there is just time to fit in a little mowing.

We planted a community orchard a couple of years ago in a sheltered corner of one of the Ridgecap fields that adjoin the commons. These fields are traditional hay meadows and pastures, once the mainstay of every small farm but now very rare and endangered. This is mainly because without being ploughed up and reseeded with modern varieties of grass, and with no fertilisers and pesticides being applied the yield (in terms of grass) is far too low to pay for the monster machinery that now populates our farms and countryside. Likewise we’ve planted up the orchard with traditional apple varieties from Sussex and surrounding counties, all on large and traditional half-standard sized rootstocks  rather than the higher yielding and smaller bush varieties.

The orchard is not grazed so we need to cut the grass by hand. Having been a rough corner of the meadow it’s a serious challenge and the first aim is to reduce the tussocks and remove the old thatch of dead plants ready for the new season.

With a little sunshine a tiny bit of coaching in technique with a scythe and a lot of enthusiasm it didn’t take long to get through the orchard – keeping the rakers busy. Andy is using one of my oversized hay rakes – it has a 32inch head,nearly 3 foot, and a 6ft handle which makes it harder to use but once you get used to it you cover a lot of ground. Both Andy and the rake seem to have survived the experience.

With a good turnout (a promise of free food and drink is always a good thing) we had upto 9 scythes out mowing, enough for a team, with several Austrian Scythes a couple of English Scythes and Nick joined us with his original ‘Turk Scythe’. These were first imported from Europe around the 1970’s when manufacture of English scythes stopped. Very light in comparison to the English Scythe. This one has a classic Austrian style blade that we often use today but the handle or snathe is very interesting with it’s straight shaft and fixed handgrips. Very light but only suited to one size of user.

I’m not sure that the scything and raking was the main attraction here, I rather think it was mainly just to work up an appetite for lunch! It was the last task of our winter work programme and so a bit of an end of term party as well as the nature of the work now changes through the summer season.

A good job done. A little bit of exercise, good company and a lunch in the orchard, a nice way to get some fresh air. Of course the job could have been done with a strimmer – but it’s really not so much fun to stand and watch a strimmer, you can’t rake the grass off afterwards and with 9 mowers on the task  it was a really quick (if not completely proficient) job.

I find it thought provoking to reflect upon which is really the most efficient way of working, one mower with a petrol strimmer for a dayor two, and Allen Scythe for a few hours or several mowers with scythes and a few rakers and forkers for a couple of hours? This blog isn’t really the best place for discussing this so I’m in the process of opening up a new site ‘The Scythe Grinders Arms‘ to host a wider discussion of environmental issues and my pet rants.

If you live in the Haslemere area and like the idea of working on the Lynchmere Commons and the meadows now and then why not join in with the Volunteer working tasks – you can get more information via the Lynchmerecommons blogsite.

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Winter Wheat Weekend

If we can’t actually go out with our scythes then at least we can get together and talk scythes!  There’s not a lot of opportunity for mowing with scythes during the depths of winter – they tend to be hung up on the wall waiting for warmer days like these blades and snathes in John Lett’s office cum snug on in his barn on the farm near Gt Missenden.

So with mowing withdrawal symptoms in full flood last weekend we (members of the Scythe Association of Britain and Ireland that is) congregated at John’s barn for a weekend of talking mowing, grass, blades, snathes and of course peening.

As John grows around 100acres of ancient grain varieties we had the bonus of discussing traditional wheat varieties as well. It’s a subject I have started to get interested in, the natural consequence of starting home bread making and wondering just what is, or perhaps more important isn’t, in the bread for sale in the local supermarkets. And thanks to Vince a master baker who works with John’s flour who came along to find out what was going on – we got to do some baking with the traditional wheat varieties as well.

This loaf was baked using a kind of sourdough recipe with John’s traditional wheat variety wholemeal flour, left overnight to rise and then it only needed a quick fold (no hard labour kneeding the dough) and left to prove before into the oven

– and quite rapidly into our mouths! Thanks to Vince’s expertise it wasn’t long before we were putting away a selection of various breads.

Like this simple focaccia – made with plenty of olive oil, rosemary and a bit of finger exercise.

and Simon Damant (not known for his gentle approach) attempts to fold a pretzel.

It’s always a pleasure to eat hand crafted artisan bread but we don’t often get an opportunity to look at where the flour comes from. With John’s grainstore just next door it was a fascinating opportunity to link the grain characteristics directly to the flour and the bread being made.

Amongst the ancient wheat varieties that John grows is Spelt, originally a cross between the one of the earliest cultivated wheats Emmer and  wild Goat Grass. You can buy Spelt flour in the UK now but it’s harder to get the grain, which can be used like pearl barley or lentils in soups and stews. John very kindly polished some Spelt grain for me – which effectively ‘pearls’ the grains. Cooking with Spelt in this way helps to retain the nutrients and fibres and because it’s not processed (ok it’s arguable that the polishing is a form of processing) it slows down the carbohydrate overload on your digestive system that highly refined white flours can often cause.

Thank you John and Vince for a really ‘riveting’ and fascinating winter wheat weekend (I am sorry for the in-joke but ‘rivet’ is a medieval wheat variety that John grows)

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Weald & Downland Museum: Instant Flower Meadow – Gold Medal Material

I know I thought I’d be posting an article on greenwood this week – but once again grass has distracted me. For a couple of years I’ve been working with a small group to promote traditional grassland management at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum.

This year we made hay by hand on a small area of grassland but it was hard work as the grass was rank. We faced many years of work to get it to the standard of a wildflower meadow, a once common but now very rare and endangered habitat. It’s not just the wildflowers that are endangered, but it’s now becoming clear that the many species which rely on the flowers, including our honey bees, are also suffering as modern intensive and industrial farming techniques have relegated wildflowers to the status of weeds (I think I’ll stop that rant before I get really going).

Here’s where the Olympics comes in. If you saw the opening ceremony of the  London games this year you will have seen the opening scene of England’s green and pleasant land in the form of wildflower meadows. I’m not a fan of the Olympics – but I was very impressed by the opening ceremony and particularly the opening scenes. It turns out that the turf for the scene was grown at  Wild Flower Turf’s farm near Basingstoke www.wildflowerturf.co.uk using their soil-less system which allows a high proportion of wildflowers to be established in the turf.

Having produced more turf than was needed the company was looking for somewhere to put down the spare rolls of turf that came back from London and it would have been rude to refuse after all?

So on Wednesday I went down to the museum to talk to James from Wildflower Turf and Keith Datchler from the Beech Estate, Battle, East Sussex about the management of the new wildflower meadow and promptly  found myself enrolled into the select band of volunteers with David, John and Allan laying the turf.

Great stuff this soil less turf, just like rolling out the green carpet. The process was a lot quicker than it would have been with traditional turf as the rolls are based upon a form of matting, a lot larger than a normal turf roll and it enables a higher proportion of wildflowers to be established in the sward as a bonus. There are dozens of  varieties in the mix and I’m delighted that it  includes self-heal and red clover which were already present in the area.  Instant flower meadow!

Just another couple of barrow loads and the meadow will be done. Richard Pailthorpe, museum director helps us get the job finished.  Just add plenty of rain and a little frost then wait for more rain, sunshine and some warmth for the flowers to do their thing. Oh and don’t forget to cut it in August before repeating the process. Simples!

All done. The new meadow looks a little threadbare and the small patch of wildflowers in the middle are certainly feeling the cold.

I’m looking forward to seeing how our instant flower meadow performs next year, here’s how the site looked just a couple of months ago in August after I’d cut the grass, tedded it and then cocked up the hay.

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