Today I want to introduce city girls to something they will likely never need to use again after moving to the country:
If you choose to mow your “yard” with a push mower you will basically mow your lawn all day, every single day. As soon as you are able to finish mowing it will be time to go back to where you started and start again. You will need to invest in one of these. {Or hire someone who owns one.}
//Please note: I made the right choice and selected a green mower for your viewing pleasure.//
Using a rider mower we can mow all of our land that needs mowing in about six hours. That means our own lawn and grass around all of the barns. That’s six hours of sitting on a lawn mower. And this past summer it needed to be mowed about every five days. Now, that is not including using a weed eater. That time is added on top of the mowing. And weeding flower beds and vegetable gardens is also not included in that time. Oh lawn work, I’m ready for winter and for my yard to go dormant.
It makes me laugh to think of suburb competition. Someone goes out to mow their lawn and you can almost hear all of the neighbors sigh, now they have to go out and mow as well. Out in the country you will rarely find the perfectly manicured lawn like in the ‘burbs. Two reasons:
1) Usually no one has a lawn touching yours, so it really doesn’t matter if your neighbors lawn is shorter than yours. Your neighbor lives at least a quarter of a mile away from you. No one is comparing your lawn to your neighbors.
2) Farmers spend lots of time working outside. When they get time off in the evenings and weekends they aren’t too excited about the prospect of pulling weeds and trimming trees.
So city girl, if you are moving to the country I am going to encourage you right now to let go of the image of perfect lawns. You will probably have a variety of grass growing in your yard, it will not grow evenly, and you will need to be gracious with yourself as you try and schedule in your hours of mowing each week.
Happy mowing,