Gilgamesh wrote in message
...
Yes, I know the sickle is still in use - although we had progressed
to
steel, I used one 2 or 3 times in the 1950's & 60's to open up the
cornfields for the self-binder - and Orwell notes the use of the
sickle in
North Africa between the wars (as well as plough teams of an ox & an
ass)
--

here in the NW of England the biggest use of the sickle in the 20th
century was actually cutting the grass etc on a dike cop (the bank a
hedge is grown on) as you were trimming the dike.
In this area In the 20th century, a ley or scythe was used for opening
out, not a sickle.


--
Jim Webster

"The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind"

'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami'