Tag Archives: Scything

Scything at The Sustainable Smallholding

Hi All

I have another Blog dedicated to scything, The Grinning Reaper, which I started in order to avoid including any of  my money making activities in this blog.

HERE

I know that we all need to earn money, but I didn’t want it to get in the way of this blog, which is designed to inform. As a quick check of my posting history will reveal, I always have less time to post in the Summer, which has meant that neither of these blogs is getting enough content, with the Scything blog suffering the most.

Therefore I have decided to put all of my future scything stuff here, including course details, and dates. Hopefully this will make it all easier to keep up with.  It also makes a lot of sense. Over the last fortnight, have been using my scythe in my  preparations for  planting trees in my new Forest Garden, and it seems silly to try and separate the scything from the tree planting.

I hope that people who now find this blog through searches related to scything, gain from the other stuff on here, and that everybody else gains from additional scything content.

All of the best

Deano

Another Month Slips By at The Sustainable Smallholding

Another five weeks have elapsed since my last post, but with the days shortening, I once again find myself with time to share with you. Things are still busy, with the end of the beekeeping and vegetable growing season, and the start of the tree planting and wood harvesting season overlapping. Before I start posting on what I’m up to now, I thought that I would post a quick round up of  what I’ve been busy with over the past few weeks.

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Water, Scythes, and the Mystery Swarm

Hi All

It’s been nearly three weeks since my last post, and there are a number of reasons for that. primarily, it’s busy at the moment. That hasn’t been helped by my computer crashing(it’s still down). I have’nt had/made the time to sort it out yet. The three biggest draws on my time at the moment are scything, watering, and bees, especially swarms.

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No time to Spare here on the Smallholding

Today I had a call from Lincolnshire Pride Magazine, asking me to do a feature on Natural Beekeeping, but had to decline, as I haven’t time to spare. Everything needs doing yesterday, and after a weekend away with my son, I’m already behind.

Jobs that are behind include the start of my scything season, the cutting of comfrey and nettles for liquid feed, soaking bean seeds, potting on of trees, shrubs, and vegetables, putting out additional bait hives, planting Eucalyptus, and of course keeping up with posts on the blog.

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Permaculture Principles – Succession

I was watering some of my newly planted trees this evening. I have tried using 30 meters of perforated pipe, but it seems to take more time and water, whereas giving each tree a good drench seems to be quicker, but requires me to be present. The watering didn’t take much thought, which gave me the space to think a little. It seemed that watering every single tree was like a reflection of the current state of the trees, which is a bunch of individual plants, each focussed on it’s own survival. At some point in the future, this collection of individual trees, will start to operate as a fledgeling ecosystem, a whole, and whilst I watered, I considered how that would come to be.

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