and the use thereof.  It was a genuine pleasure to cut the oat-grass, a cover crop for some perennial grass, on the dam.  Mostly because I chose to grab the grass scythe and do it, in less time than it would have taken to fuel the string-trimmer*, get it to start**, and then shatter the quiet of a beautiful afternoon.  A correctly sharpened and adjusted scythe makes very quick work of mature oat grass, laying it down in a neat windrow, too neat for this purpose as I had to go back and scatter it lest it smother the other grass.  It does less well on the native North American bunch grasses, but then scythes and the oat/hay grasses of Europe evolved together.  No doubt for thousands of years farmers encouraged the grasses that not only grew well but that cut well to the rhythm of a scythe swung about three inches above ground level, row upon row.

The scythe in question, or the snathe of it, was made by Derby and Ball in Waterbury, Vermont; once one of the largest manufacturers of scythes in the world.  The razor-sharp blade is a triumph of metallurgy, precisely curved in both profiles, and astonishingly hard for such a thin piece of metal.

*The joys of ethanol, I always run the tank empty before storing anything with a little, fussy engine.  How much money and energy do you suppose ethanol has cost in engine repairs/refits?

** fussy little, pull-start engine with ethanol in the spark plugs and a very finicky choke.  Actually, it starts very well.  But still…