Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums :hello:

Nowt much to report, if you don't count my four (FOUR!!) cafe extravaganza yesterday morning :eek: :eek: :eek: As you know, I've been trying to write an application for promotion, and, well, self-promotion doesn't come naturally to me so I've been trying to associate writing the application with nice things, and trying to get some work on it each morning so I have the rest of each day properly off without feeling guilty

It's working well, and yesterday was particularly productive, but, er, my cafe strategy did involve rather a lot of tea :eek: :eek: :eek: You'll be pleased to know that the garden sufficed this morning :rotfl:

Anyway, the rest of today has been spent lazing around in the sunshine for a bit, *trying* and failing to protect my bowl of lunchtime noodles from the chickens :eek: Honestly, they are SO pesky (but I suppose eating while sitting on the floor in the garden is rather tempting for them...) :rotfl:

Anyway, big news of the moment is that we are making our own hay! Because we don't have enough to do :rotfl: We have scythed three strips of the field (there's about two thirds of an acre in all, and we've barely made a dent in it ). One strip was dry enough to bale today, so we have been experimenting with something I saw on twitter last week - making hay bales in a wheelie bin

Delighted to say it works! And is excellent fun, as one of you has to actually get IN the wheelie bin to squash the hay down :rotfl: :rotfl:

Anyway, we've made two bales now :rotfl: We'll probably get another four or five out of the hay we've already cut tomorrow, and then there is rain forecast on Tuesday - that'll at least make the grass easier to cut, but obviously we'll have to wait for another dry spell to get it dried and baled.

According to my calculations we should end up with about 50 bales if we get to the end of the field :eek: Which of course we might not - at any point if it gets TOO ridiculous we'll just open the gate and let the cows in to eat the rest :rotfl: But we're keeping going for now!

(Well, not tonight We've done quite enough today and it's nearly dark!)

Got visitors tomorrow afternoon, and much as I'd love to think they'll help, they have two rather small children and I reckon small children and scything mix about as well as chickens and scything :eek: so we'll likely get the baling done before they get here, and more scything once they've gone and the chickens are in bed.

Gosh, life is very different to a couple of years ago :rotfl: :rotfl:

Fortune_Smiles

Well done on application and scything progress Cheery :T Wheelie bin hay bales sound like an excellent idea. Off to G00gl£ now.

Fortune x

greenbee

Where did you learn to scythe? I need to cut my long grass, and I have a scythe, but am being a wimp.

Mind you, there's not much, so I might just do it with the edging shears, then rake it up for the green waste collection...

Cheery_Daff

Don't be a wimp greenbee! :j Watch a few scything videos instead

I bought my scythe from a bloke who makes his living scything He brought it round and gave me a lesson

I'm sure people spend years learning properly, and my technique is probably laughable to anyone who can actually do it but as far as I can gather the basic points are

- keep your scythe sharp (do you have a sharpening stone?)
- keep it low to the ground - no swinging up in the air at either end of the stroke
- move your whole body round when you swing, not just your arms
- keep your scythe sharp (yes, again - I sharpen about every 10 minutes)

That's about it, for my half-arsed version anyway :rotfl: Just give it a try, what's the worst that can happen? (er, obviously make sure all children and animals and other people's feet are out of the way first :eek: :eek: ) It's MUCH easier when the grass is wet - first thing in the morning is best, but also wet from rain is better than dry.

My technique has got MUCH better even just over the last few days with doing it so much, so just give it a go!

Karmacat

The wheelie bin sounds fantastic, Cheery :j
I definitely did some scything when I was a teenager, in the local country park (the Wirral! You probably know if it ...) it was great fun. Very little health and safety in those days

teapot2

My uncles had a scythe on their croft and we used to try it out when no one was looking :eek: happily I think it was completely blunt so I survived childhood with all toes intact

greenbee

I have a sharpening stone, and sharpened it recently - I also did the sickle which I use in the stream, but need to repair that as one of the bolts holding the blade on has come out. Probably my fault for oiling it!

I have work I need to get done today, but also want to split and stack the last of the logs which are annoying me after a year in the drive, and maybe make a start on the long grass so I can mow it before the spring flowers start coming up. It’s full of weeds, so I don’t think anyone would want it as hay!

greenbee

I split the logs instead of scything. So that's one annoying thing done and off the list! I'll save the scything for when I next need to procrastinate about work

Cheery_Daff

Ha, good plan greenbee - that's definitely the way to get everything done eventually! :rotfl:

Yes KC I think I know where you're talking about :j

Very pleased you kept all your toes Teapot!! :eek:

Very hot here again today. More promotions form this morning, then cafe, a load of sitting about, and we now have SEVEN bales of hay in the shed :j :j it looks far more once it's inside than it does in the field :eek:

Last day of holidays tomorrow and I have sole charge of my three nephews :eek: embarrassingly for the first time ever :eek: they range in age from 10 to 13 so I'm really not sure how I've managed to avoid it for this long

My sister is planning to feed them smarties for breakfast :rotfl: :rotfl:

greenbee

Give them coca-cola just before you send them home

What are you going to do with all the hay? (Apart from build a barn to store it in...)