We knew the time was coming.
The weather today was much too perfect to ignore. We had to attempt mowing our 7 acres of yard – and today was the today.
Honestly – we didn’t think that the yard actually needed to be mowed yet. It just didn’t look that shaggy. But we borrowed my mom’s zero-turn mower for a test drive and – whoa – this place looks like a million bucks.
We learned a lot.
The south 2 acres – “our front yard” – is wet. Like super wet. We knew a small spring ran through it – but until you really spend some time down there, you don’t truly know how much water is sitting among the trees. I’m sure the moisture is excellent for the big old roots that grow there, but we may need to look at directing all that water a little more intentionally sometime in the future.
Generally, it took about 2 hours to pick up 4 four-wheeler loads of sticks across the entire property. Granted, this was the first intentional stick gathering post-Winter – so we definitely had a few giant branches that had dropped and needed to be handled. I imagine this will go a big faster on future runs.
With the zero-turn, Aaron and I each put in 3 hours of mowing. He tackled the large and wet 2 acres near the road. I took care of the back, side and front yard immediately surrounding the house and barn.
We didn’t manage to get to the grass surrounding the out-buildings, orchard or pond. That probably leaves us with about 2-3 additional hours of mowing left. The real perk is that the zero-turn nearly eliminated our need for weed eating and trimming – so a little clean up with the push mower will handle the last of the details.
When we moved, we saved a little budget for a mower. We knew that the size of the property and the amount of mowing to be done would require some serious (and comfortable) equipment. Now, we’re on the fence about just which mower set up to buy.
New or used?
Tractor or mower?
Which brand?
One or two?
By our logic, we could probably have two used zero-turn mowers for a similar price as one new one. If we can both be mowing together (and we get a little better/faster at it), we could likely tackle the entire 7 acres in about 4 hours. If we started at 6 am – we could handle the entire thing in the coolest part of the day and not have it wreck a full day out our Summertime weekends.
It’s solid rationale. The hard part is finding two good condition but cheap mowers. I’m scouring Facebook Marketplace and spamming Aaron’s messenger with listings until we finally make a purchase. Which – to be reasonable – will have to be soon since we have about a week before we need to do it all again!