GOING GREEN WHILE GETTING YOUR EXERCISE

Parts of the scythe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Who Needs a WeedWacker When You Can Use a Scythe?

Grim Reaper Jokes Aside, Suburbanites Take Swing at Ancient Mower

With a WeedWacker under his arm, Dan Kowalsky was at work trimming the median strip of U.S. Route 1 in suburban Westport, Conn., when he was asked, above the din: Why not use a scythe?

"You mean that Grim Reaper thing?" he yelled. "Can't get grass nice and short with that thing, nice and perfect."

People who scythe put up with a lot of Grim Reaper cracks. Then again, long-handled, crescent-bladed scythes don't use gas, don't get hot, don't make noise, do make for exercise, and do cut grass. (click below to read more)

Which is what Jean-Paul Pauillac, a 55-year-old French chef, was doing a five-minute drive away. "This is my samurai chop," he said in his backyard, swinging a scythe through ankle-deep growth. His neighbors' lawns were cropped like putting greens. "They come to the fence and look," said Mr. Pauillac. "Maybe they think I'm cuckoo."

While Americans persist in cutting grass with labor-saving devices, faithful scythers believe their old tool has plenty of life left in it. In the dozens just 10 years ago, U.S. scythe sales are nearing 10,000 a year now, for a kit that costs about $200. Predictably, scythe buyers are small, green farmers; unpredictably, they are also city folk and suburbanites.

At Marugg Co., which has been selling scythes out of Tracy City, Tenn., since 1873, the typical scythe buyer used to be an Amish farmer or a horror-movie prop master, according to Amy Wilson, the current owner. Now, it's "anybody and everybody," she says. "It makes it difficult for advertising, but still…"

"I get emails from people who just want to mow the lawn," says Botan Anderson, a Wisconsin scythe promoter. Carol Bryan, owner of Scythe Supply, in Maine, says: "We have backyarders who say, 'My WeedWacker just threw a rock through the window. I want a…how do you pronounce that thing? A sith?' "

Ruth Callard, 58, a personal trainer, got a scythe (rhymes with writhe) to cut the grass around six apple trees that she and a few neighbors have planted on the I-5 freeway embankment in Seattle. The city let them plant but refused to mow. "It's the budget," says Ms. Callard, "so we bought the scythe. The hips do most of the work."

Patrick Crouch, 35, bought his to tend a community garden on central Detroit's "urban prairie." He likes it because it's "totally brutal." As he blogged: "What could be more badass than walking the streets of the Motor City with a scythe slung over one's shoulder?"

In Detroit, maybe, but to cut a wide swath through the Great American Lawn, scythers have longer rows to hoe. Scythes are poetic. ("My long scythe whispered," wrote Robert Frost; not, "My lawn mower whispered.") Yet scythes may be better known now to videogamers as the Dark Knight's favored weapon in "Final Fantasy XIV."

The early-American scythe (a British import) was, in fact, a back-aching tool with a humpy snath (the handle) and heavy blade. It was quickly superseded by mechanical mowers. Scythe sellers still make snaths, but an American hasn't forged a blade since 1958.

Germany's last scythe factory died with communism. Spain and France soon lost theirs. The favored source now is the Schröckenfux factory in Austria, a maker of quality ergonomic blades since 1540.

Schröckenfux produces 200,000 blades a year and sells 60,000 to Iran, having assured sanctions authorities of their peaceful intent. But in developing countries, it battles low-cost scythes from Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. Russia exports scythes, too (and hammers and sickles).

The situation raises a fear for the quality scythe's future. Peter Vido, a homesteader who subsists in New Brunswick, Canada, with one light bulb and a website devoted to scythes, worries that scythe production at Schröckenfux "may just roll over and die."

To keep it alive, he argues, "demand for quality blades in the wealthy countries must increase dramatically." It's happening, but a vital element is absent: qualified scythe instructors.

Duffers can pick up tips on the Web: Never scythe downhill; if you trip you might fall on the blade. Casualties are few, unless you're like British novelist Marcel Theroux. He scythes in the London suburb of Tooting, and committed the error of honing a blade while chatting with a neighbor. "I almost cut my thumb off," he says.

It takes a pro, nevertheless, to teach the perfect stroke. At this point, scythe pros are needles in haystacks—which explains why Kurt Weaver was happy to find Larry Cooper.

Mr. Weaver, 52, is a researcher who lives in a brick house in a suburb of Raleigh, N.C., with his wife, Stella, and their son Oliver, who is nine. They have a front lawn, a back lawn, a driveway basketball hoop, and a garage with a scythe hanging on the wall.

In 2009, Mr. Weaver used it a few times to cut roadside grass for compost. "It can wear you out," he said. He has since let his scythe lie fallow, but on hearing that a pro was in town, Mr. Weaver said: "A scythe lesson? That'd be great."

Mr. Cooper, 54, is a blacksmith from Alabama who set up shop in the Raleigh area to make tools. When his WeedWacker broke in 2006, he got a scythe, studied the moves with an expert and became an expert himself.

"It's all subtleties," he said, rolling up to the Weaver's in his pickup one evening. "How to rotate. Lead with the shoulders. Don't work the arms. If it hurts, you're doing it wrong."

On seeing Mr. Weaver in the driveway with his scythe, Mr. Cooper told him, "You got a ditch blade there. A grass blade's skinnier."

"You want to demonstrate?" Mr. Weaver asked. First, Mr. Cooper gave him a lesson in sharpening (it's done by peening—with a hammer and anvil—never by grinding). Then he said, "We'll mow together."

Mr. Weaver took a swing at his back lawn. Mr. Cooper stopped him: "It's not a slap shot. It's not a hockey stick." He got a grass scythe from his truck and went into a smooth, floor-mopping motion.

"The blade stays on the ground," Mr. Cooper said. "Try it." Mr. Weaver did, and soon found his rhythm. "It really works," he said. "I can't wait to do the front lawn, see if anybody calls the cops."

To his son, who was standing to one side with an uncomprehending gaze, he said, "You want to learn to do this, Oliver?"

Oliver didn't. His father and Mr. Cooper scythed into the twilight. A riding mower droned somewhere up the street. Oliver got out a ball and shot baskets in the driveway until dinnertime.