Old Men With Scythes

Old Men with Scythes Traveling the roads of rural Austria by motorcycle in nineteen sixty two or three we would see old men with scythes mowing the ditch banks: their retirement careers, but a job done now days by tractors, even in the Alps and I leave the ditches to the tractors, except at the mouth of the driveway, but after that I am the old man with the scythe. I do have my grandfather’s Ametican scythe, but the blade is stamped-steel as we made them in this country. I use a scythe blade of cold-forged, folded Austrian Steel in layers of two types of steel that vary in hardness, which makes it easier to sharpen to a fine edge. Of course that means you will have to do a lot of fine sharpening. The time spent sharpening is proportionate to the ease of sharpening and the roughness of use. This here Dogs Plot is rough territory for mowing and I am too rough a tool user, not an old master, just old, so I generally use a shorter blade made especially as a ditch blade, midway between a brush hook and a twenty four or six inch wheat mower. I have several twenty-four inch blades which I have broken at he heel on trees, rocks, or half buried old farm machinery, and which my mechanic has welded - a couple of them twice in slightly different places.and they are stronger at the break than before even - but I just use the ditch blade. And this season I had not been stopping to hone it every five minutes like the book of Scythe says, The Master Mower carries his curved whetstone in a copper sheath looped over your bel and filled with water; so as to stop mowing every five minutes, stand and hone for five minutes then go back to mowing; which keeps the tool sharp, prevents the mower from overheating and blowing a seal, but ALSO and especially from becoming over inspired by the power one has with it that one become dangerous also to bedded fawns, trees, and the blade itself. Well I had not been good to the tool this year, had only honed to before setting out, not carried it along, had failed to stop often enough, overheated, nicked the blade, and never lasting more than half an hour. Worst of all I had not I had not even done the necessary, intermittent peen-hammering that these cold-forged blades need so that the sharpening stone will not be trying to put a low slope point on a blunt edge. The system wouldn’t work if things did not wear away, and with good behavior, the tool will last as long as the man. And so it had been wearing on me. it was past time for some cold forging. See it happen in the video with some of the misses and bad clangers clipped out. I had filed it first to get the nicks out. I didn’t file it enough. Today’s another day.

Hickory and Tramp work it out while Sylvia takes the bowl

Joy Blues

In the morning when the Salt Trucks rumble by I blow the harp pretty hard and then I fly off the deck . "Where's your bicycle?" Joe Long asked when I landed by his LONG POINT ORCHARD fruit stand. I usually ride my bike over there for fruit. I couldn't very well try telling him that I had flown, of course, nor did I need to, I just told him my grandson had it to fix which he does, and I didn't have to lie and say I walked the quarter mile over from Dog's Plot. I bought a bag of apricotts for a quarter, which was all I had, but it was a big bag, good deal.

Silvia came for Dinner

The Possum that regularly came to dinner after the cats was done in by a car. A pair of young Coon syblings showed up here onece, and then there was one...with silver ear rims as you see, who shows up in daylight hours, almost trusts me (who HAS shot rogue coons here) and she, almost, dines with the cats. Cats know that Silvia, being a Coon, is more closely related to Bears than to cats, and more closely related to humans than bears, to judge by their hands. I can't wait to see how the cats react when the octupus comes around for dinner!

Hickory the Vegetarian Cat

Hickory is not a true vegetarian, just a cat gormand, and like all cats, he likes his water flavored by what ever is living or has died in it. He particularly likes the little frog pond here that has all the duckweed growing on it, and Duckweed is called that because some ducks like to scoop it up with those flat bills made for just such a thing, but Hickory has no problem with lapping the Duckweed off the water, which leaves a little lake of open space for clear drinking, but then he eats some more Duckweed, and after eating a lot of Duckweed one needs to do some exrtensive scratch/stretching, I read that there is some promise in the possibilty of raising duckweed as a forage crop for other domestic animals, and I have tried it myself, but for me, it would need some processing, maybe through a Duck. I would never knowingly eat a cat, unless I were on Noah's ark, could find no land, and had already eaten the other animals from Ant, to Ant Eater to Zebra.