Peppe, a Last Link to Treasured Rural Memories

“Giugno, la falce in pugno” (“June, the scythe in the fist”), says an old Italian proverb, re-echoing the days of scything hay manually. Times have changed: at Peppe and Gentile’s farm two weeks ago, fifteen hundred bales of hay in the hayshed – with fifteen hundred to go, Peppe told me. He’s haying all alone – his tractor, his only companion. With this heat, he’s out in the fields before daylight. Amazingly, he’s back on the tractor after a short post-lunch pennichella (“nap”). It’s now July so the hay is in: time for the wheat, oats, barley.
When we farmed in the late 70’s, haying was a group venture, all of us rotating from farm to farm throughout June, til everyone’s hay was in. There was some mechanization but in our hilly area, the smaller hand scythe, la falce, and the ominous looking grim-reaper type scythe, la falce fienaia (literally, “hay scythe”) were used to cut that hay along ditches, on hillsides, and around trees which escaped the motorized falciatrice.
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