Mowing green(ish)
Lest you think Maggie is doing all the work herself, let me tell you about our new lawn mower. Until yesterday, I hadn’t mown a lawn since sixth grade, when my family moved to a house without a lawn. At that point, I used an ancient reel mower along with a rusty manual edger.
Lawn mowers have come a long way since then. We were hoping that we could get away with a reel mower (one of the few occasions where the green option is the cheaper one!), but with a half acre lot, it just didn’t seem feasible. On the other hand, a riding mower seemed like overkill (although most of our neighbors seem to use them) and I’ve never liked gas mowers (which pollute as much in a hour as a car does over 350 miles). Fifteen years ago, that would have been it.
But now that we’re living in the future, electric mowers are an option! We’ve been looking at corded mowers for a week or two now and they seemed like a good option. They mow well and, although the cord would be unwieldy, they’re cheaper than battery-powered mowers and last longer (as long as you have handy outlets).
Saturday evening, we had to go to the mall, so I suggested we head through Sears and check out their mowers. Their online selection seemed slim, but I thought it might be useful to see them in person. They did have some nice reel mowers, and a million gas/rider mowers, but we didn’t see any electric ones at all. At least, not until we saw the clearance section off to the side. There, right in front, was a nice Craftsman battery-powered mower. It was still about 50% more expensive than a similar corded mower, but it was almost 50% off. We went home to think about it but, when I found a 10% off coupon for refurbished mowers that expired that evening, we decided it was the way to go.
Next door neighbor Nathan and I took the mower over the house on Sunday and plugged it in so that I’d be able to mow yesterday. I had a moment of fear when it conked out after just three passes, but it turned out that trying to cut grass that tall had flipped the circuit breaker. Once I reset that, and set the height to 6 (out of 6), I was able to cut the whole front and most of the side yard. The battery could have kept going, but I couldn’t. I’d been a bit worried that 40 minutes of mowing time, the amount I’d seen on the Internet, wouldn’t be enough. It seemed to run longer than that and certainly as long as I wanted to mow.
Unfortunately, the gras was so high that Maggie is going to take her turn mowing tomorrow, this time at a lower setting. She’ll start in the back, though, so that everything will be mowed at least once.
I won’t say that it was fun, but it was another adventure (rite of passage?) in home ownership!
Brian said,
July 15, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
Clearly you need one of these:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/07/15/the-killer-robot-she.html
Will said,
July 15, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
Maggie did suggest getting sheep (or goats) to mow the grass for us, but I’m not sure I could convince her that a robot sheep is just as good.
Tommy said,
July 16, 2008 @ 12:12 am
It has six legs!
We went with a corded mower (this one). I really like it, but our yard sounds like it’s about half the size of yours. We did have to get a little creative when the lightning temporarily took out both our garage outlets and our back porch outlets.
The thing I like most is that it’s easy to start up. I despised fighting to get my dad’s mower to start. Instant starting also means that there’s no penalty for turning it off to empty the bag more frequently or reposition by rolling over the extension cord.
Dana said,
July 16, 2008 @ 10:39 am
I had one of those “now I really must own a home” moments this weekend, too. We bought a rake and a push broom so I could get all the pine needles off the driveway.
We also need to get some sort of mower. We don’t have a lot of grass (yay!), but I’m kind of worried that what we do have right now is too long for a reel mower, at least for the first pass. Continuing to ignore it until it goes away probably isn’t the best solution, though. We could also use a goat to eat all the poison ivy, but I don’t think our neighbors would appreciate that.
Bugs and Brooms said,
July 16, 2008 @ 10:40 am
The joys of home ownership! We are renting now (since we have only been here are few months) but hope to buy something in the future. We started with a reel mower but we have TOO MUCH yard! Really, we should all have Food, not Lawns. Much more rewarding to work for food than to just cut grass! But way to go on getting a greener mower. I did look at getting some chickens and sheep to help with yard maintenance but the landlord wasn’t very supportive of the idea!
Will said,
July 16, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Tommy: Yeah, it is great how easily the electric mowers start. My impression is that they require less maintenance too, but we’ll see.
Dana: When my parents came up on the way to St. Louis, we had them bring some rakes. As kids, we each had a rake so that we could all work in the yard together. That was great, but it means that my parents had 6 or 7 rakes!
B&B: Longer term, we’d definitely like to convert more of the lawn into garden (or at least xeriscaping). Our only concern is that the septic field is somewhere in front of the house and we don’t really want to grow food above that. Perhaps flowers or something instead.
Once we get settled in, Maggie plans to get a couple of chickens. Personally, I’m more excited about having bees, but the don’t help with the mowing!