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Interesting Technologies

Posted at 3:44 PM on August 5, 2008 by Vera Schabicki (2 Comments)

I asked for and received a lovely scythe for my birthday.

I really hate the sound of lawn mowers. Every Friday in California would be lawn day, at the earliest hour of the morning would begin the ritualistic mowing edging blowing of suburbia into groomed perfection, so loud, so stinky....... So I thought a scythe would be a lot more fun..........If you are smirking at this point then you obviously have a better grasp on reality than I do. As my friends ruefully watched my yard turn into a green jungle and my husband secretly went and visited the dust covered John Deere mower in the barn, I would happily go out for a few minutes of scything. But between kids needing things and kids needing things and kids needing things and having to cook three times a day and never mind the laundry.....I would get a little square done, not very effective. But it is fun and I think if I really had more free time every day to devote to fun things like garden work I would get a kick out of it (and maybe have a tiny waist????) but alas my many acre yard rapidly began to go native (if you have ever been to Mississippi you know how scary this is)........and my kids gratefully got out old John Deere. Of course first I had to try to shame them into being harder workers by watching this lovely video, (or maybe I was trying to shame myself?) And I must admit Natasha did quite a good job for at least two whole days.............

Well, to make a long story short and relate this to being a locavore, I bought myself a wonderful Neuton Lawn mower, with a grass catcher (my old Ryobi rechargeable mower died after fifteen years of diligent service). My garden was such a disaster from the armadillo attacks and I was ready to give up in despair.....but Scott and I gathered a bunch of logs and built up some little walls around the garden beds and I have been adding copious amounts of grass clippings and manure tea. I do not have any veggies except Malabar spinach.....which strangely enough no one in my family likes.... But everything is looking much healthier even though we are having a serious tomato horn worm invasion....so hopefully in a couple of weeks we should get some garden vegetables (which is about as local as it gets, as Galen likes to say).

Well, I am off to scythe for a few minutes and to try and figure out how to remove the chaff from the grain of my wheat.

Best wishes, Vera

Comments (2)

Hi Vera,

I too bought a scythe -- on sale at a local store for $3. It doesn't work. The handle swivels, so that when you swing the whole thing just turns and the blade does not meet the weeds. One of these days, I will shell out for this good one. Thanks for all the links.

I am also a vegetarian and I am looking for a way to take local grain and get the husks or hulls off of it. I prefer cooking the whole wheat berries or whole oats, barley, etc. to using flour. Not that I know how to get the grain turned into flour, but at least I know that is called "milling". I cannot find de-husk or de-null on the internet.

The grain in our organic, "local" (refers only to produce) store comes from southeast Asia. Do you know of any way to get local grain?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Barbara

Posted by Barbara Zilles | August 11, 2008 9:06 AM

Loved the video! You are my hero, scythe away!!
Namaste, Patsy

Posted by Patsy | August 11, 2008 1:24 PM