The Open Adventurer: Grain Cradle

As the gasoline engine got smaller, it became more and more ubiquitous; over time finding its way into barns first, then (as America turned into a land of not-quite-city and not-quite-county) home garages. Now every house in Suburbia comes equipped with a gas-powered arsenal of land-management tools. Or more aptly, landscaping tools. People no longer work the land to reap benefits like food, but rather to confine it, keep it trimmed and meeting HOA codes.

But in the days before wire trimmers, or so-called weed whackers, there reigned a king capable of taking down an entire field of grass in a single day, never needing so much as a drop of gasoline. Looking at the American Scythe (different from the European Scythe in its shaped handle design) I wonder why we ever made the switch to those little gas monsters. The jump in complexity is preposterous and beyond exponential. But speed! Ah yes, and efficiency! God Loves Efficiency! If like me, you were sure a gas trimmer must be way faster than a scythe, well friend, we were both wrong.

American Scythe

European Scythe

Grain Cradle

In fact, there are many stories about people racing gas trimmers with scythes, most telling the tale of a woman with a scythe cutting a patch of grass faster and cleaner than a man with a gas trimmer. And they are true.

The scythe is such a simple, elegant tool because of its organic evolution. Clark Dodsworth of The Informal Learning review did a paper on the evolution of tools and in it talks briefly about the scythe. He writes:

"Now, the scythe is not at first glance an obvious solution. In fact, it looks extremely primitive; the handle is very like a piece of a tree limb, and the blade looks exactly like a cross-section of some Pleistocene carnivore's fang. It has an oddly curved shaft and weirdly-placed handles. The thing does not even initially make sense until you pick it up. Then, extraordinarily, it teaches you how to hold itself and how to wield itself, even if you picked it up the wrong way. Parts of it gradually became shaped to the task, and the rest of it became shaped to the user, so that, finally, it became able to shape the behavior of the user. Sounds a little like dog training, doesn't it? It is an excellent example of both a well-designed interface and an evolutionarily mature device; one that wants to do what it is intended to do, and has technique implicit in its design."

I think that pretty much sums up the elegance and usefulness of the American Scythe.

And at the local flea market this morning I found and purchased that elegance. I'm going to peen and sharpen the blade , like they do here. Then, well, the grass grows tall around this place, and after getting the hang of it I bet I won't be gassing up the Bush Hog any more.