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New Member
 
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Last Login: 5/28/2009 7:00:59 AM
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Saw this in the New Haven Independent....It was an unintentional but friendly battle of the lawnmowers, two houses apart on Livingston Street on a sparkling, birdsong-filled spring day. On one lawn was Dave Taddei, with his helper and his $100,000 worth of equipment — ride-on mowers, trimmers, blowers, rakes. On the other was Natalie Coe, with her 30-pound non-motorized reel mower and a bag for collecting the sticks — even tiny ones — that can stop a mower like that cold. The two happened to be mowing lawns in East Rock at the same time Wednesday, with two very different sets of machinery.
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/05/mowing_green.php
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Senior Member
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Last Login: 12/14/2009 4:19:30 PM
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| Interesting! One of my chores as a kid was to mow our really big yard with a reel mower. I hated it then but I'd love to have one now. If we had a real yard, anyway. We give our sheep and goats access to the yard (it's about an acre in size) and only have to mow high spots maybe once a month. The yard is in between their overnight areas and daytime pastures, so they have the choice of going out to graze or lounging in the yard part of the day. As they move from lounging spot to lounging spot they nibble. Works for us! One thing worth mentioning is that this is a super-rocky southern Ozarks ridge top and when we came here there was not an earthworm in sight. After five years of sheep and goats in the yard, we have lots of earthworms. Nannyberries and eweyberries are pretty decent drop-it-wherever-it-lands lawn fertilizer. Sue
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Average Member
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Last Login: 6/14/2009 6:27:31 PM
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I'm a bit put off by the woman saying she didn't like the noise wile gardening.
The lawn man is trying to make a living. It's not as if he went out to get the biggest mower he could so people would see him. He's not in a biker gang.
maybe she should think, "I'm glad he's got a job and not laid off", or "I'm glad I can live in a place were people can afford to pay someone to cut the grass".
I'm sure these house and lot folks are happy pushing that wheel thing around the yard....fine, more power to them. I have no desire to do that. I cut my grass with An X-Mark Lazer Z to make it look like a golf course. I like the grass around my house to look very nice. That way I don't look like some back woods hick.
At the same time, the lawn next door...(my Father's) looks like it was cut by a drunk. He just wants the grass CUT.
I don't think that those wheel mowers are all that big a deal "green" speaking. Ponder this,
Many people play the grass is greener game. You know, the man who has the best lawn, woman with the best flowers. Showing off by pay'n a man $65 per for cutting the grass just show's how good they are doing. Trust me, I make a ton off those people.
so
In "greeny ville" I think some people try to do the same thing by play'n a diffrant sport. Look at me, I'm using a wheel mower. I'm saveing the Earth.
eh whatever. Glad I don't have anyone close enough to see me Pee in my yard.
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 3/4/2010 2:41:16 PM
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Now that's going green! Think how much water you save by not flushing 
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Average Member
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Last Login: 6/14/2009 6:27:31 PM
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| Actualy, much of the grey water here just goes back out into our hayfields. It's grandfathered in. In drout times, we know one field that will produce hay or corn for the family. They talk about forcing everyone to go on a sewer line. That sounds so foolish to me. If wells are not close to each other, why take water away from the earth??? Many Barns here still have an outhouse. I guess someday they will ban those as well.
If i ever "go" and it's Green... I'm going to the ER.
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Starting Member
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Last Login: 1/8/2010 10:59:59 AM
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| Funny, my husband and son are in the habit of "lawn sprinkling". We're on 5 acres here but have 21 up in north FL. There isn't much mowing going on at either place. Most of our property is left "au naturel" except close to the house which is landscaped with flowering plants that can take the heat. So far with the drought we've had I've literally mown once. For Florida that's a record. As far as going green.... we only run sprinklers on our vegetable garden , the rose bed and our citrus grove. My husband says everything else has to tough it out, so we try to conserve our water by watering frugally. I'm not really trying to be "green" you can tell by looking at my yard!!
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Senior Member
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Last Login: 12/14/2009 4:19:30 PM
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| I LIKE being a country hick. :o) John and I have never been conventional people. We used organic lawnmowers (for the most part) even when we lived on the edge of town in Beroun, Minnesota. My parents were yard proud. As a kid, pushing that mower, I decided my yard(s) would be as au natural as I could make them. And they are. We would still have an outhouse if it weren't for the huge spiders and copperheads here in the Ozarks. We had one for the last 14 years we lived in Minnesota and used it year round. There was an inside loo but it was only used in the direst of emergencies. As a result we saw the Northern Lights many times each year; admired the big full moon shining on deep winter snow, turning it blue. We heard the loons calling at daybreak on Tamarack Lake and woodcocks hurtling themselves toward earth during their mating season. We didn't have the outhouse to be green, it was just--nice. We saw and heard things we wouldn't had we shuffled to the bathroom to do our thing. I should add that our outhouse was a single-holer but a thing of (to us) beauty with Dutch doors so we could leave the top one open and admire the stars at night. I miss it--but do not want to sit on anything huge, eight-legged, and hairy in the middle of the night. Sue
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Average Member
Group: Banned Members
Last Login: 6/14/2009 6:27:31 PM
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well this chat just dropped off a bit 
organic lawn mowers? to follow the rules, no such thing can be. I mean, they want to tax you for cow flatulence, so you can't let the animals do it, they are causing a warmer earth. You can't have a mower.. carbon Foot print... a you can't do it yourself because according to that last study, people who burn more calories will eat more and they want to tax that.
they have slanted every angle just to get an edge.
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 6/3/2009 7:22:53 PM
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Good article, thanks for posting. I'm with Sue on this. Out in back of our house, the grassy area isn't really lawn, but more places for the animals to graze. Out front, we're on a mission to get rid of "lawn" areas -- actually more moss and buttercups than grass now. Huge swaths of perfectly-kept lawn have always seemed pretty useless to me (great for kids to play on or to have a picnic, but in suburbia most people don't use them for anything.) We mow only sporadically (with an electric mower), since one of the reasons we moved into the country was so we wouldn't feel we had to keep up with the Jones's. This year I had a bumper crop of beautiful dandelions out front that I cooked up into fritters and sauteed the greens and saved the flowers to make jelly (and maybe wine).
If people put all that time they spend keeping their lawns perfect (or the money spent to hire someone else to do it) into a vegetable garden (or buying fresh, local produce), imagine what a fabulous garden they'd have!
Cherie
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Average Member
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I laugh at that last line because the new, "keep'n up" with the jones is a garden. people are spending unreal amounts of money on gardens and whatever, but the men who cut there grass, are putting in the gardens.
clients of mine stopped carrying ornamental garden things like stone and bushes to make more room for veggie crops and they pay him his landscapers wages to show them how to plant a garden.
the new style is to be humble. I'm more independent than you are.. my carrots are larger than yours.. LOL.. ha ha. it's so funny.
but it's the reason they do it that shows how fake it is. I mean there is a clear line between being able to actually do it yourself and pay'n someone in York PA 50 an hour to plant your tomatoes so you can brag about how when the world comes to an end you'll be ready.
i guess I see the other thing as well, I mean yea I play keep'n up with the jones.
My buds and I try to out garden, out farm, out work each other.
Our wives joke at us when we all talk about how many pounds of taders we planted or how many chickens we hatched ect. It's the same as city boys with fresh cut grass and freshly waxed cars...only, we can eat what we make.
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