We Set a Record This Year

June 12, 2020.  I cranked up the lawnmower for the first time this season.  That is the latest that we've ever waited.  It required jumper cables to get the thing started, but I had treated the tank with fuel stabilizer over the off-season and in no time, it fired right up.  Most of our neighbors have been mowing for months, but we have been letting the cows mow.  It is quieter, peaceful and pastoral.  Instead of driving a lawnmower, we sit in the shade and have coffee and watch our lawnmowers work.

We have a solar-powered charger with temporary fencing on a reel that we use to separate the yard into paddocks that we rotate the cows through.  This postpones actually having to mow, and this year we made it all the way until June 12th to have to mow.  No, even after the cows eat, it doesn't have the nice manicured look.  Additionally, the cows leave their "calling cards" that you must dodge as you are walking across the yard, but all in all, the benefits to me are enormous.  Of course, if we lived where there was an HOA, we would have been kicked out of the neighborhood long ago.  The cows are happy that I kept my mower in the garage for so long.  They eat to their heart's content and then Rosie sits down and chews her cud in the shade underneath the pecan tree.

Clarabelle, however, keeps on eating.  She'll graze until it's time to put her back in the fenced in pasture.  I trust the solar-powered fence, but not enough to leave them in all night or if we leave the house during the day.  One time we weren't paying attention and someone driving by saw our cows out and walking down the road.  The neighbors knocked on our door and told us, and we had to run down the road and catch the escapees.

In this last paddock or two under the pecan trees, Tricia would like me to never mow and allow it to become permanent pasture.  I'm mulling that over.  It would require new fencing.  The photo below was right when we put the cows in.  We left the cows in here all Saturday and Sunday.  They really cleaned it up nicely when they were done.  I don't have an "after" photo.  Can you spot Tricia watching the cows eat?

Here she is!  She's swinging right by the "hot" wire.  The blue bucket in the background is the water tub we drag from paddock to paddock as the cows eat.  This Saturday we sat in the grass behind the swing and enjoyed the view and the unseasonably low humidity.

So we set a record this year - June 12th for the first mowing date.  Now, I need to see if I can parlay that saved time into productive time to get some things knocked off my to do list AND some time to relax!