Cranked Up the Lawn Mowers Today

This is a post I do most every spring.  Don't mean to bore anyone with it.  We do have a zero turn riding lawnmower.  It's a Bad Boy brand.  I have on my to do list to purchase a filter and some oil and change it before mowing the yard this year.  I still have a while to go before I mow, so I can put off changing the oil for another month.

The yard is full of white dutch clover, african violets, and many other weeds that I can't identify.  Lots of white, purple and yellow flowers in abundance for our honey bees.  Instead of cranking up the Bad Boy mower, I set Rosie, Elsie, and LuLu free in the yard to mow the grass for me.  They save gas, allow me to do other things, and they provide 'fertilizer to the lawn.

The photo below shows all three of them in a tight line doing 'precision mowing.'  They're just lined up and raring to go!  You can notice that I have some step-in posts in the ground with an electric fence line strung on it.  I break the lawn up into paddocks that I estimate that the cows can mow down nicely in one 6 hour time period.

The electric fencing is on a ratcheting reel that allows for quick deployment as well as rolling up.  Our Gallagher solar charger keeps the fencing energized.  Dad let me borrow a tester to determine if the fence was "hot" or not.  All of the lights were lit up, signifying the charger's intensity.  We were a bit concerned about putting Elsie and LuLu out as they've never been outside the pasture.  They are not accustomed to the electric fence.  Rosie knows it well and she's accustomed to it.  She respects it, you might say.  I watched them as soon as I put them in there.  First, Elsie reached over to eat on a shrub outside the perimeter.  She leaned in and touched the electric line.  POP!  She jumped backward.  Same thing happened a few minutes with LuLu.  Now they know.

The mowers did their jobs, effortlessly, quietly, and happily.  The photo below shows you how you know the mowing is done.

At the end of the day, with the sun setting, the mowing is deemed complete when you see the mowers sitting down.  You then simply turn off the electric fence charger and move the cows back into the pasture.  Then you move the fencing to the next paddock.  Rinse, wash, and repeat until the whole yard is mowed.  We do this a couple of times before mowing with the machine in late April or early May.