I NEVER REST IN recommending Alexander Langlands’ Craeft to people. It’s a book on traditional and pre-automation craft and maintenance, but also about how doing such activity, or not doing it, has a cognitive effect on how we interact with our physical world of objects and environment. Yes, it’s very middle-aged British man, but as one friend to whom I recommended put it, it’s easy to be spiritually a middle-aged British man, prepared to talk at length about tools, and bee keeping, and lime burning, and roof construction, and many other things. Counter to the last post on historical recreationism and its discontents, such people are entirely and convincingly sincere, in a way that I find compelling and almost physically appealing. I am therefore delighted to find (thanks to this thread) that there is a small but burgeoning corner of the Australian rural marketplace which is all about scything and scythes; the manual tool you know about from its association with Death, but which does the same job as a petrol brush cutter, snipper, or push mower, but quietly. Consider the answer—undeniable—from one site’s FAQ, to the question ‘why buy a scythe’:
Commenting is closed for this article.