Sickle bar mowers are no high performance machinery and need a lot of maintenance, compared to disc and drum mowers, but are definitely the better mowers in my opinion. This is not only due to their low impact to the nature, but also due to the quality of their work. The knives cut the grass instead of knocking it off like fast rotating drum and disc mowers. A sharp cut lets the grass grow better again, thus optimizing the next harvest. In Luxembourg you can even get financial support by the Ministry of Environment when participating in a wide-ranging program called “maintaining the biodiversity,” as this mowing technology is recognized as environmentally friendly.

I recently assisted, during my daily work as a teacher at a technical high school, on a training course of the so-called “global training program” of one of the German premium car manufacturers. Together with twelve of my colleagues from three different schools in Luxembourg, I learned during two days diagnostic methods for “Telematik” systems. “Telematik” is one of these crazy new German words, resulting of the combination of telecommunication and informatics. I not only found myself confronted with bizarre electronic malfunctions, but also with a lot of new words, which haven’t found yet their way into my small world.

In August 2001 my wife Cathy and I visited the late Charlie Pinney in Scotland. Grown up and having run a horse farm in southern England, Charlie moved later to the north of the United Kingdom where he farmed for some years with his second wife, Ella. It asked for some perseverance to arrive at their home, named Animal Swordle Farm, as it was located far away from every sign of civilization and only a small path guided you to the farmstead. Situated in one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen in whole Europe, the Scottish Highlands, it could easily be the motif of a postcard. Just a five minutes’ walk away from the rough west coast of Scotland facing the Atlantic, it was surrounded by nothing else than sheep and even herds of red deer grazing on the impressive green mountains.