GRIT blogger Dave Bentz, aka Nebraska Dave paid us a special honor this morning. It turns out he was on his way from Omaha to Syracuse, Kansas but decided to take a 100 mile detour to stop at the GRIT office in Topeka and say hello. Dave and his faithful Ford Truck Ricky (Ranger Rick) arrived in time for a tour of the Ogden Publications vegetable garden (graciously hosted by Mother Earth News Assistant Editor, Shelley Stonebrook), some great conversation in the GRIT corral and lunch at one of our favorite diners just south of town. We took the liberty of sending Nebraska Dave on his way with a GRIT cap for his head and a GRIT totebag for some of his tools.

During lunch I learned that Dave spent 40 years working for the telecom industry after realizing that farming didn't offer the future he was hoping for as a teenager. And he would be working in the industry yet today except that he discovered that travelling the country as part of a volunteer construction/handyman crew was even more fun than work. So he decided to go ahead and take that retirement package to do what he really wanted to do. Dave is now back on his way to southwest Kansas to work on the sanctuary for a new church in Syracuse -- a project that's expected to take about a week to complete.

We also learned that Dave worked out the final kinks in his backyard gravity-flow garden watering system and a few other really cool things that you will just have to wait patiently to read about in his GRIT blog, or one of his other wonderful blogs located here, here and here. You can also read about the adventures of his pickup truck here. We love you Dave!

I've used a number of different scythes over the years -- most were borrowed and used mainly to cut vegetation in places where I couldn't manuver the tractor and mower. Some of those scythes were heavy and clunky, but worked nicely at whacking back brush. Others were light and almost flimsy -- those worked well for mowing grass. What I hadn't realized is that every one of those scythes were fit to snaths (handles) that were too short for me and in many cases not adjusted properly. My very first custom-fit scythe arrived in the mail last week and has so-changed my comfort level with this tool that I am now quite certain that I can hit my hand-made-hay tonnage goal this year. If you are ever tempted to mow or make hay using hand tools, be sure to spend some time at the Scythe Supply website -- lots of good information there and great prices on first-rate Austrian scythe blades and Maine-made custom snaths.

Not having to stoop makes it easy and relaxing to swing the scythe in the proper 180-degree arc. I'm by no means an expert, but for the first time ever, I have less trouble keeping the scythe level through the entire swing. It's fun when you don't have to fight it.

Thanks to the folks at Scythe Supply, I learned that the scythe is supposed to slice the grass, not whack it. Once I had the blade's hafting angle adjusted properly, the scythe literally sang its way through the grass.

My custom-fit scythe package came with a copy of The Scythe Book by David Tresemer. This work is full of lore, history and techniques for getting the most out of your scythe. If you don't believe you can do it, read this book and you will not only know you can do it, you will want to do it.

My homemade hay rake comes in handy whether collecting freshly scythed forage for the pigs or sun-dried forage for the haystack.

The dogs like to rummage around in the hay meadow when I mow and I love their company. As with any mower, tractor mounted or not, you need to keep track of these little guys because a well-honed scythe will slice off their legs as quickly as a discbine -- and they won't hear the scythe coming when digging after some varmint or another. Pearl is more precious to us than any amount of hay or pig food.

In spite of the 102-degree heat yesterday evening, we ritualistically headed out to cut grass for the pigs and knock down more hay. We got the pig food loaded into the trailer just as the sky opened up and droppped 0.65 inch of rain on the farm in 15 minutes. It felt good to shiver and to postpone the hay mowing for another day.

Photos: Courtesy Karen Keb.

I'll admit it, I've been forever fascinated with old ways of doing things. And even though I love the sounds and smells associated with making hay using diesel-powered equipment and modern, self-tying large round balers, I've always wondered whether I could pass muster with my ancestors and make sufficient hay to feed some critters through the winter using only a scythe, wooden hand hay rake, pitchfork and wagon. I've used a scythe off and on over the years to whack weeds, and I would always rather do something physical around the farm than go to the gym and run on a treadmill, so I decided that making hay the old fashioned way would be good for me. I already had access to an Austrian-style scythe and we had a few old pitchforks, but I needed something to handle the raking. I've seen vintage wooden hay rakes in antique stores -- and they sell for pretty good money so I decided to have a go at making one myself. I took a look at some rakes online and even took a look at some "plans" in a couple of green woodworking books and then just decided to do like my German ancestors would have done when they hit the Dakota territory in the late 1800s -- make do with what I had around.

My first step was to head into the small copse of woods in the center of the farm to harvest a Hackberry sapling of sufficient length and dimension to shape into the handle. I cut and limbed the sapling with a machete that the folks at SOG Tools sent me to mess around with. I next cut a Hackberry log about 30 inches long and 6-inches in diameter from a snag left by the dozers when they repaired one of the pond dams on my farm (my chain saw came in handy for this work). I carried these pieces along with a 20-inch by 8-inch diameter Black Walnut log, sourced from the same snag, back to my improvised woodworking shop in the barn and went to work.

To begin shaping the handle, I shaved the bark from the Hackberry sapling using a drawknife I bought in 1978 to shape boat parts (my boat building phase lasted about 10 years).

Once the sapling was free of bark, I shaved it down until it felt good in my fielder's-mitt-sized hands. At one end, where the handle would be connected to the rake's head, I shaved the sapling into a tenon that was roughly 1.5 inches by 1.0 inch in cross section - and I set the handle aside to dry out for a week or so. Meanwhile, I used a splitting maul and antique forged froe to rive out a Hackberry billet about 30-inches long by 1.5 inches thick by 2.5 inches wide. I used the drawknife and a flat-soled spokeshave to shape that billet into the rake's head and then trimmed the ends with a handsaw.

By the time I got all of that completed, the handle was sufficiently dry that I traced the tenon's cross section onto the center of the head and using a hand drill and chisels, cut a slightly tapered mortise that gripped the tenon snugly with just a few whacks from the mallet. I then located positions for 7 teeth and bored half-inch holes through the rake head, top to bottom. I took care to eyeball the drill so that the holes were more or less perpendicular to the bottom of the rake's head.

Next, I used the splitting maul and froe to rive out Black Walnut billets that were about 5/8-inch square in cross section and 20 inches long. These I rounded to slightly more than 1/2-inch diameter with the drawknife and spokeshave and then I cut them to length. I got about three teeth from each billet. I left the center tooth considerably longer than the others. I next sized the teeth using my SOG Flash II folding knife so they would fit tightly into the holes I bored earlier.

Once sized, I used the SOG Flash II to whittle a crude, dull point on the rake teeth and drove them home with a hardwood mallet. Although the rake was fully assembled at this point, and I was tempted to try it out, every wooden hay rake I have seen uses some means to brace the handle and head in a triangular fashion. I've seen iron strapping, wire, steam-bent wood and sawed braces on antique rakes. I decided for this first and somewhat primitive attempt, I would use looped wire twisted taught like the diagonal on a fence brace to do the trick. It's not pretty, but it works great.

So far, I've used the rake to put up a little more than a ton of hay and to gather at least that much fresh-cut forage for the pigs. It works surprisingly well with its 7-foot hand-hewn handle and riven head and teeth. I will probably make my next rake a little wider and will take the time to rive out diagonal braces and steam-bend and rivet them to the handle and head using a few square-shank copper nails and dished roves (left over from my boat building phase). I plan to put up at least 5 tons of hay yet this year (yes I know it's late) -- I'll report on the progress and on the rhythmic joy of swinging a scythe later this month, hopefully.