Initiative aims to keep alive age-old skill, and at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset improve habitat for rare shrill carder bee 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 21 st-century meadowland in the old-fashioned way. Continue reading...