Summer exists for two reasons, to prepare for winter and to mow the lawn. The first reason is for pure survival. The second reason is even more important as there are few things more “Minnesotan” than mowing the lawn. It is an activity that holds priority above all other pursuits.
Lisa and I have no lake home so we are around home most weekends. I occasionally will hear a friend or family member talk about taking a weekend trip to the lake. I assume the purpose is to fish or water ski however it no longer surprises me when they say they plan to mow the lawn.
Minnesotans, or maybe just the ones in this area, prioritize lawn mowing above their own recreation. Perhaps they prioritize it as it is their recreation. I have often thought about how nice it is to ride the mower and listen to a baseball game on Lisa’s Worktunes headset.
I don’t even like baseball that much but combine it with lawn mowing and it is one of the few joys I can extract from summer. Lawnmowers were once a pretty humble device. I mowed most of my young life behind a 20 inch push mower. We eventually went to a John Deere 56 rider that used short blocks like a two stroke snowmobile uses spark plugs. Still, it was nice to ride instead of push.
Lawnmowers have become a sort of status symbol. Today, many lawnmowers are “prosumer” grade. These mowers are available to average consumers however they are so well-built that they can fulfill the needs of a professional mowing service. Full suspensions are more common now and manufacturers are pretty generous with horsepower. This makes for a fast, comfortable experience.
A fast experience is important to me. Lisa and I mow with a large Ferris zero-turn mower. Lisa is careful and mows in such a way that the lawn is left with a cool grid pattern. It takes her forever to do this, at least based on my measurement of time. I mow in whatever way is the quickest. I keep the control arms in the “full forward” position as much as possible and only release them marginally to make a turn. There are little “turf avulsions” on our lawn from the force and torque it takes to complete the lawn in less than 2 hours.
The prosumer mowers have allowed us to mow even more than we should reasonably desire to mow. I mean if you have a high capacity mower, you naturally want to usurp more territory from nature and cut it to a four inch height. I believe this is just looking for trouble, particularly in rural areas. Years ago, people left chain, wire and glass bottles in the woods. When you turn that forest into lawn, you avail your mower to generations of un-mowable steel and other garbage.
While living in the golden era of grass-removal equipment, we also need to remember that all that power requires restraint. We also need to remember that any task has a human element. There are about 100 ways to fall behind on a farm, today I found all of them. This very human condition meant my carefully planned mowing session did not end when I had planned, despite my prosumer mower and worktunes headset.
