The 13th West Country scythe festival 2017

Coppersmith

As usual there were hundreds of stalls plying many wares, the coppersmith was a new one for me and I was rather taken by the bath! Andy Harris is the coppersmith.

Fan birds 

This year there seemed to be quite a lot of traditional tools also on display ranging from knives made by Oliver Davison (actually brought a couple of his spoon knives) to secondhand scythes, hammers, axes’ billhooks just to name a few. Then there were the hand made rakes, forks and stands’ many from the far flung corners of the globe.

Willow maiden

Willow herb ooops hare

The amount of willow work was also outstanding especially the willow maiden some ten or more feet high with a hare appearing from under her skirt. The music was brilliant as usual and the bar never ran out of beer or cider 🙂 much merriment was had.

The heats started in the morning with the usual strimmer scythe race, this year the trimmer won but was later disqualified on the grounds that the offending operator actually left most of the grass standing and just gave it a whisker job, in other words he dam well cheated!

Teatime

After that it was the team races and then onto the finals, he is a gallery of those taking part including all those people who do the raking, organisation, time keeping and judging, all very important jobs not least forgetting those who organised the kitchen for the mowers and all.

 

A well earned rest

So who won? George Montague won by a country mile, well impressive and about time to. Kevin Austin came second and the well deserved third place went to Andi Rickard who also had won the ladies race. Terry Standon won the English scythe race.