"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

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'


I don't dispute that, although I was taught that the bagging hook was the
tool for the job. I'm sure either did at least as good a job as the big
petrol strimmer my cousin uses on the hedgebanks now - and we could use the
resulting hay for the rabbits. I would, however, have been 10/11/12 at the
time, not
big enough to handle a scythe, and not savvy enough to be trusted with one
anyway. I usually got roped in on the basis that David (my friend & the
farmer's son) couldn't come fishing until the job was done, so it was a
sickle each. These were smallish fields of oats - D's dad still used the
self-binder on those, although he combined the rest of the grain crops (he
fed the oats in the sheaf if my memory isn't playing tricks)

--
May glorious Shamash make his face to shine upon you

Gilgamesh of Uruk
(Include Enkidu in the subject line to avoid the spam trap)