English Heritage trains new generation of scythers to maintain meadows and craft
English Heritage is training volunteers in the traditional skill of scything to maintain meadowlands at Muchelney Abbey. This initiative aims to preserve heritage crafts while promoting biodiversity and protecting habitats for rare pollinators like the shrill carder bee.
Why it matters
Combining traditional land management with modern conservation efforts offers a sustainable way to maintain ecosystems that mechanical methods may damage.
English Heritage volunteer coordinator James Adams scything meadows at Muchelney Abbey, in Somerset. Photograph: Andre Pattenden/English Heritage/PA English Heritage volunteer coordinator James Adams scything meadows at Muchelney Abbey, in Somerset. Photograph: Andre Pattenden/English Heritage/PA English Heritage English Heritage trains new generation of scythers to maintain meadows and craft Initiative aims to keep alive age-old skill, and at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset improve habitat for rare shrill carder bee
Prefer the Guardian on Google It sounds like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel: a merry band of men and women roaming the West Country cutting meadows by hand in exchange for hunks of bread and cheese.
But the conservation charity English Heritage is recruiting a team of volunteer scythers to maintain 21st-century meadowland in the old-fashioned way.
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