Is muscle or sun better than fossil fuel? Wimpole seems determined to prove so.

There are so many advantages of a scythe versus a motorized mower or strimmer (quieter, less soil compaction, cleaner, no fossil fuel required, no emissions, great exercise etc. etc.); it’s a beautiful and useful tool. But the main reason for choosing machines over manual is the premise that machines gets the job done quicker. Well, the team at Wimpole seem determined to prove this isn’t always the case. Check out their contests, organised by champion scyther and Forester, Simon Damant.

Read more here.

The sickle

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A good old-fashion sickle, sharp and perfectly weighted, is a tool just made for the job of clearing vegetation from around the trees. It given the user total control and thus does not damage the bark of the tree as often does the use of a powered grass trimmer (strimmer) and requires no guards to be placed around the trees either.

Using a good hand tool is all about letting the tool do the work. Despite the obvious strain on the back, using a sickle is very therapeutic and far more eco-friendly (and quieter) than a machine. In fact, many organizations are starting to realize the advantages of working this way.

The scythe, too, is making a comeback in countryside management, and so it should. The billhook is another one of those tools that just cannot be beat when working in the management of woodlands and the countryside.

Even when it comes to felling in small woodland management operations the crosscut saw, one man or two man, will still, with the exception of the sneding of the branches, often beat the chainsaw and especially as far as noise and other pollution is concerned.

The design of the sickle, basically, has changed little since the Middle Ages and even before, though many different kinds for different purposes, much like with the billhook and the scythe, can be had. The principle, however is and remains the same. The differences are things such as sweep and curve of the blade or serrations on them, such as some of the Indian and Japanese ones have.

The good thing about a sickle is that it does not require much tuition to use it, more intuition, unlike the scythe, which does need a little skill that needs acquiring so as not to injure oneself (or others). Even the billhook requires more acquired skill than dos the sickle. Keeping it sharp, in the same was as with regards to the billhook and the scythe, is a different kettle of fish and that does take some learning.

The sickle can be used for many cutting tasks from cutting away vegetation from around trees and here especially saplings without the risk, unless one is not careful, of cutting them off or damaging them, as is often the case with the use of a strimmer, to harvesting standing crops. And, before the advent of the scythe that was what the sickle in many a form was used for also.

I, for one, love using these tools, a real link to the history of countryside workers, as they are effective and also efficient and require little to no real maintenance, other from sharpening and keeping them clean.

© 2013

Old skills, crafts and trades for the new age

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The new post-fossil fuel age will require the skills, crafts and trades of the old ones, in many aspects, especially those of working with one's hands and with hand tools.

Despite the fact that shale oil and shale gas are now being extracted by means of the most controversial method of “fracking” we are coming to the end of cheap and abundant oil and gas.

In 2011 the world used 40% more oil than it produced and the forecast, though dampened by the Great Recession, was that in 2012 over 60% more than produced would be consumed.

For a while now already various countries have put oil from strategic reserves on the market in order as not to frighten the populous with rocketing prices at the pumps. Sooner rather than later, however, those reserves are going to run out and the pigeons are then coming home to roost for sure.

And when that happened and the reality of the fuel going beyond what can be borne by the people and industry, much of how we work now is going to change; change back to the way the old people did things way back when.

This will mean a return to working with hands and hand tools and human-powered machines, be this a treadle or hand operated sewing machine, a treadle lathe, or the billhook, axe and crosscut saw in forestry.

It is, however, not only the use of those tools and the ways of using them that we will have to learn (again). We also must learn how to maintain them and keep them in good order, and also how to bring old, neglected ones back to life and into use again.

Many of the tools for those old skills, crafts and trades that we will need for the new age are often no longer made and thus we must, aside from making them again, refurbish the old ones that we can still obtain. Those old tools will be more valuable after the even than any gold or silver.

The skills, crafts and trades required for the new post-carbon age are, in fact, legion and they are those that many of our ancestors mastered, more or less, themselves. Many knew a large number of them as to be as little dependent on others as possible.

It is true that no person can master all those skills and can be entirely self-sufficient but we all will have to become as self-reliant as it is at all feasible.

You may not be able to produce your own leather from scratch but you should be able to make your own leather goods and growing at least some of your own food must become second nature as it was to our grandparents and their parents.

Getting hold of some old how-to books from publishers such as Odhams is a good idea and another good source is the Foxfire series of books, and then practicing many of those sills until you master them. The Odhams books were published in the 1930s and 1940s or thereabouts in Britain and can today, almost exclusively, only be found on flea markets, yard sales, trunk sales, and such like, and maybe, but then probably expensive, in secondhand antiquarian bookshops.

Nothing, however, beats learning from the old masters, and I am not referring to painters such as Rubens and such, but there are today few and far between. Many of those old masters, alas, have gone by now and those few that are lest are difficult to track down. If you can learn from a practitioner of the arts count yourself very lucky indeed, learn all you can and then go and teach others.

For the great majority of the needed old skills, etc.,, you will have to, I should guess, resort to (old) books and then learn them – the skills not the books – by trial and error and of both there will be many until the stage of more or less perfection.

Aside from old books there are also new ones, even videos, to be had that show the how-to of many of those old skills, trades and crafts, etc. In most cases, though, the old books are a great deal better.

The most important skills is, however, your mindset and no one can teach you that one. The mindset of which I speak is the one of seeing a way of making things from almost nothing; reusing, repurposing and upcycling.

When we have to make do with less, and that is also that we will have to learn again, and can't buy everything (immediately) at the stores – because of costs – being able to reuse what we have is a great skill though it may not, necessarily, bring in any income as some of the others may.

Learn all that you can while you can...

© 2013