Introduced Matt and Chelsea to a traditional craft today, the use of the sickle. In truth they were happier and made more good progress with the electric lawn mower and the strimmer, (apparently it’s called a weed wacker in the USA). In the picture Matt is guarding Chelsea from any vampires that might be lurking in the grass, although with that sickle I’m sure she could look after herself. For years I wondered why all the depictions of early farming showed people harvesting grain with sickles. I couldn’t work out why they had not got round to inventing the scythe. Eventually I stumbled on the answer, early varieties of grain, barley oats etc. had seed heads that were easily dislodged, so walloping them with a scythe would have made all the grain fall on the ground. By using a sickle and holding the grain as you cut it you could minimise this. I suppose that’s why gleaning was such a popular activity for the poor in the Christian Bible as a lot of grain could be left on the ground from harvesting.