Scythe - Tool for cutting grass

Recently purchased a tool called Scythe for cutting grass. First heard about this tool from the Fukuoka farming yahoo group friends. Ordered this from Canada from www.scytheworks.ca and the total cost was 150 CAD (8680 INR), payment was done through Paypal. It took around 4 months for the scythe to reach my home, but tracking was available upto Bombay. Cochin customs fined 1500 INR for importing it without a license and another 3000 INR was the customs duty charges. So total cost was 13000 INR (240 USD).

Finally fitted a snath which I had cut from my farm and fitted it, there was no handles attached. Could see that it is able to cut large area, but not getting the swing given in the videos, probably will need more practice. Able to sharpen the Scythe using the sharpening stones provided, we are supposed to peen the blade edge using a hammer to take care of the bends, this is not tried yet. If it works as per the videos shown in kerala conditions, it will be a real good tool to use. I can see that the tool has the capacity for that, since it is razor sharp and lengthy edge cuts lot of grass in one go.

Here are some videos available in the net about the scythe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lygbTKzu47Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdE3ZHRwo2c

Paddy harvesting using scythe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMxSCDp-f9I

02 December 2015

Myself and friend Anil met Alexander Vido and his son Gabriel at Vallikavu, Amruthanandamayi Ashramam for a scythe training.The meeting was co-ordinated by Jagannath and his friend David. Alexander gave a detailed lecture about blades, snath making, blade fitting, peening, sharpening and finally sessions on cutting grass where all of us tried it. Earlier while using, I never fitted snath properly and major issue was grips were not there at all. Alexander gave me a grip and a screw for fitting it to the snath. He gave me a blade free of cost, for cutting bushes and also fixed by blade filing and making it's edge clean. The session was immensely useful and I hope Scythe willl be part of the farming activities. One issue was with stones in the field, so we discussed about this and only solution was to be careful and also pick and keep it aside.

Here are some photos with him.

Clearing touch-me-not grass...

Growing sunhemp for a season

I had put sunhemp in one area of the farm and it was growing nicely and in some area there was grass also. I left it grow for a complete season and it flowered and produced seeds. I harvested some seeds and left the remaining there. This particular area was not watered, so it was natural growth. In the summer, all the grass and sunhemp dried and now this area is ready for cultivation. One thing to notice is that, just before the starting of rains, this area is completely clean of grass. If you see a adjacent area in the other farm, where there was grazing and watering, strong grasses are there. In this area, to do any cultivation, we have to first remove these strong grasses. But the area where the sunhemp was growing is ready for cultivation and we can start from zero grass, but now the crop should be established with the first rain, otherwise grass and sunhemp itself will come. I should have either collected all the sunhemp seeds or shouldn't have allowed to mature, since lot of seeds are in the soil which may interfere with the next crop. But it was nice to see that with heavy mulch produced by sunhemp grass has disappeared temporarily.

I also had another area in the farm where I had cut the grass at multiple times (at least twice in a year) and mulched and watering was done for cowpea cultivation. This area still has lot of grass and grass is growing very strong. So in my observation, grass gets reduced if the area is allowed to grow and then dry for a complete season without disturbing it.

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Adjacent farm - where watering, grazing was done.

Sharpening tool

I use a 'Vettukathi' (in malayalam, probably chopper in English) for cutting the bush and coconut leaves . To start with handle was a big problem, after some use, it will come out and later I learnt that if the iron part comes out from the other end of the handle and fixed, then the handle won't come out that easily. I searched for such a tool and found it and then I was able to use it without any issues so far.

The second issue was the sharpness of the tool, if tool is not sharp, cutting is frustrating, it takes many more attempts to completely cut stems of bushes. Once when the tool became blunt, I took the tool to blacksmith and he sharpened it nicely, but after some, it was back to the same. My helper told me, he also take the tool to blacksmith and only he can sharpen it nicely.

During a visit to a home exhibition, I bought a file for sharpening tools. I just tried that and felt, the chopper has become sharp. Now I keep the tool with me so that I can sharpen it once in a while, instead of taking the tool to blacksmith and it is working beautifully. My helper also acknowledged this factor after using the chopper for cutting a tender coconut.

Updates - Hot weather,House construction,Cow pea cultivation etc...

Hot Weather

Weather is too hot now a days, it has reached 42 degree centigrade in Palakkad. Summer showers are still missing, last year we had very good showers on April 22nd and April 28th. While travelling to the farm, I can see some of the ponds has gone completely dry which I have never seen after the relocation. My well had 4.5 feet of water after deepening it, now it is completely dry. Water level in the 'Kokkarni' (pond) has also gone very low and motor runs just for 1 hour. I can see fishes getting suffocated, last time when I was watching one crawled to the side land portion and after some time again jumped to the water. At home I can see kingfisher going deep into the well looking for fish, since many of the water sources has gone dry.

House construction 

This is a small house to stay for us and for guests. Wanted to reduce the cost of construction and hence used old doors/windows, but still they are strong. I won't be plastering the walls and low cost tiles will be used for the flooring. It is taking more time, since labors comes for some time and they will go with other sites and keep going many projects in parallel.

Tamirind harvesting

There is one old tamirind tree which yields well. We harvest and process it removing the seeds and planning to sell it in the open market during festival time when the price is good.

Cowpea Cultivation

After the experimental paddy was cultivated, the field was having grass, so thought of growing cowpea without tilling. One reason was to make the field more fertile for the next season paddy cultivation. The grass was cut two weeks before.  Grass was pulled back and then seeds were sown and again mulched with grass. I made sure that this time, the thickness of mulch is uniform..so this time it established better.

 

White ants

White ants are active in the summer, eating whatever is available and converting to soil..

Mangoes

This time mango trees was not having much fruits..The particular variety of mango given below is called 'kudiyan manga' or 'nattu manga' or 'chandrakkaran'. If the fruit is ripe on the tree itself, the taste is unimaginable. When my 12 year old niece was asked why she wants to come to India from US for the vacation, the reason what she gave was to taste this particular mango which she had tasted two years back.

Successful Fukuoka style no-till farms - Some examples

Masanobu Fukuoka had practiced no-till farming for rice/wheat/barley for many years and he was getting excellent yield. His system was maintaining clover as cover crop along with grain for weed control and broadcasting grain seeds over the existing crop. This is the most simple and less effort method of grain farming, but people who tried can tell that it is not easy. The main problem will be in weed control and also finding the right cover crop, equivalent to clover is another task. 

I have seen some people trying no-till grain farming, but majority of them has failed.  A few exceptions are - Raju Titus of M.P, Shyam Shrestha of Sunrise farm, Nepal, Krishna of Solitude farm and another French blog

Here is the link of Raju Titus blog and photos of no-till rice/wheat can be seen here.

rishikheti.blogspot.com
https://picasaweb.google.com/104446847230945407735/NATURALWHEATGROWINGWITHTREES20082009?noredirect=1#

Raju Titus does not use any specific ground cover, but uses local grass itself as ground cover. People visited his farm says, the soil is very fertile and no-tilling for years has reduced weed pressure a lot. So my feeling is that this may not be easily adapted for a new comer, he has to work his own.

Another example is that of Shyam Shrestha of Sunrise farm, Nepal. I had talked to Shyam Shrestha last year and they still do no-till farming.

Their method can be seen in the following link, since it is detailed I am not describing it again.

http://ebookbrowse.com/3-no-till-pdf-d324006369

The complete book can be downloaded from http://permaculture.org.au/2010/01/06/farmers-handbook/

Here is how Krishna of Solitude farm does no-till farming. This is done by growing velvet beans as cover crop and then broadcasting rice and then cutting and mulching velvet beans above this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0xmEDq3NIs

Unfortunately yield obtained from these methods is not available.

Here is one French blog where no-till has been pictured, not able to contact this person.

http://marssfarm.centerblog.net/

Shallow tillage direct seeding

The challenge now I am facing with rice/sesame/cow pea cultivation is the lack of uniform germination. I felt germination is better with tillage and as part of this was reading the book 'The Natural Way of Farming' once again to see the initial experiments of Fukuoka San. He has done lots of experiments before coming to the success and here is a section from the
book.

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Shallow-tillage direct seeding: 22 pounds of each barley and rice seed may be sown together in the autumn and field raked. An alternative is to lightly till the field with a plow to a depth of 2 inches, then sow clover and barley seed and cover the the seed with rice straw. Or after shallow tilling, a planter may be used to plant seed individually or drill.Good

results can be had in water-leak paddy fields by using this method first, and then later switching to no-tillage cultivation. Success in natural farming depends on how well shallow, evenly sown seeds germinate.

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The book clearly says uniform germination is the key and suggest to use 22 pounds (9.9Kg) of rice seeds per quarter acre, i.e - 39.6Kgs per acre which is a good quantity of seeds which will make sure, uniform germination. In conventional method locally they suggest to use 33Kgs per acre, while in transplanting using SRI method, just 3Kgs is used per acre, since only single rice plant is put in every 1 feet distance. 

In addition to this, book suggests to go for shallow tillage initially and later switching to no-tillage.

Seed ball experiences

I tried making seed balls in this season for finger millet, rice, cow pea and sesame. I was reasonably successful in making seed balls for finger millet, rice and sesame. For all these seeds I was able to make them wet and mix with white ant hill soil and after 5-6 iterations seedballs were ready, it was reasonable from effort and output point of view. For cowpea, making them wet, they started soaking water and seeds become large and the outer cover peels off and even if seed balls are formed, some time seeds come out since the outer cover of the seed is very smooth. Hence I had to roll individual seeds which was time consuming.

I tried rice seedballs and germination was very bad. There might have some issue with watering also, seeds being in seedball need more water first to soak the seedball mud and then seed. For finger millet, sesame and cow pea also the germination was very bad. All these seeds I had broadcasted and cut and mulched the grass. Other than moisture, I am not sure what other factors affect this. For cowpea and rice, I had seen the seeds eaten by some insects and some time the seeds were damaged and they just disintegrates on pressing. Probably some moisture was there, but it was not enough for healthy germination, but enough to damage the seeds. One thing strongly felt is that, in summer when moisture is less,using seedball is not that useful, since when you want to cultivate with available moisture, seedballs take extra moisture to soak the soil covering. I could see that after watering the field completely by next day, the field is dry at the top, but underneath there is moisture which is enough for the seeds to germinate.

When I tried sesame, and none of them had germinated, even after watering. Typically sesame is cultivated after rice using available moisture. They till the land and put the sesame seeds and again till it and the seeds germinate with the available moisture. Also I think, when the seeds are in direct contact with moist soil, the chances of germination is much better.

In the next trial, I made an opening in the soil using a sharp tool and put sesame seeds in this line. And I could see lot of them germinated. In some cases, where there was mulch, germination was bad, it looks like being very small seed, they won't be able to lift the mulch and come up. From my experience so far, germination is better when seeds are put inside the moist soil.

Making opening in the soil was time consuming and hence now wanted to broadcast the seeds and then rake the soil so that seeds go into the moist soil.

In Masanobu Fukuoka's 'Natural Way of Farming' in the picture 'Toward a natural way of farming' he says to follow 'Direct-seeding with shallow tillage' before going for 'no-tillage direct-seeding'.