Scythe

The grass in my paddock has been getting too long - thigh high.  I get the northern neighbour to put some animals in there to graze the grass and get it down, but unfortunately as half the paddock is orchard, the long grass is most likely inhibiting the growth of the young fruit trees. I was wondering how I could deal with this problem.

Then I remembered that I was given a scythe several months ago, by someone who stumbled across it at a market.  It cost $15 NZ if I recall correctly. It looked pretty hard done by and rusty, and has a shorter blade than most I've seen online. I didn't expect it to be much use at the time.

But after a quick sharpen with some sharpening doodad I bought at Bunnings, it worked pretty well. It won't do a full sweep, and generally requires several goes to do so. But it still does the trick. My push powered hand mower sure isn't going to do the job. Here's my berry patch scythed.  You can see the electric fence behind the stump, and beyond it the area the cattle grazed.

It probably took me 45 minutes at most, to scythe around the 40 plants in the ungrazed section of the paddock. Not bad. I think I shattered a small piece off the end of the blade when it hit a stone, and it hit lots of stones which can't be good for it. It makes me want to buy a proper scythe, but I'll have to do some research on that.