Meadow mowing and path clearing

One part of managing a meadow is mowing; this is back breaking and hot work but must be done to allow the shorter stemmed flowers to see the sun and provide valuable food for our honey making ladies, the bees.

At one end of the meadow is a people area with comfrey and other flowering plants the bees like and nettles that the tortoise shell butterfly caterpillars like to eat (and so do we in soups!). These plants can be a problem to humans but instead of removing them they are just cut back from the paths, as with many jobs the traditional tools are the best so for this task we use hooks and sickles.

Traditional sickles.