The Evolution of Grass Mowing

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A couple of months ago I had the privilege and honor of trying my hand at Grandpa Shill's manual mower. It is a precision instrument with twisted steel blades, one fixed blade, two wheels and the handle coming up. With great force, and I do mean GREAT FORCE, you can push this mower, watch the blades turn and cut grass against the fixed blade. It was like watching scissors do synchronized swimming. It looks something like what you see to the left. For most of my life I have been accustomed to what we would call the pushmower. Gas powered and usually has some gears to keep things moving forward. I'd call it your every day mower. For me and my 13,000 square feet of sod it meant we had a few hours a couple of times a week to bond. It finally came time to break down and buy a riding or tractor mower. The tractor mower cuts the job down to about 45 minutes from the 3 hours I used to spend. I love it. It's almost therapeutic.


Two weeks ago I had another experience in mowing like I have never had before. I met the Hover Mower. The hover mower was supplied by our landlord here in England, I suppose. I had never seen anything like it. It has a blade underneath just like my push mower or the riding mower (which actuallyhas 3 for a broad 56 inch swath). It had a plastic body with a bin that came off and it was electric powered not gas powered like I was used to. Looking at it I could gather how it was to work but I thought seeing would be believing. For a better description I'm going to include the description from Wikipedia: "Hover mowers are powered rotary push mowers that use a turbine above the spinning blades to drive air downwards, thereby creating an air cushion that lifts the mower off the ground like a hovercraft. The operator can then easily move the mower as it floats over the grass. Hover mowers are necessarily light in order to achieve the air cushion and typically have plastic bodies with an electric motor". Well mine doesn't seem to float very well, and I can't do the arching movement yet, but it gave a nice close shave if you will. And I can say I've used a hover mower. The one question I kept asking myself is, have I moved forward or backward in the evolution of grass mowing?

Comments

Cheryl said…
What a well written post. I like you have a deep love and apprecation for mowing the lawn. We once had a neighbor call and ask to talk to Rich. He wasn't home so the guy said, well I just wanted to ask if I could borrow his lawn mower. I quick corrected him and said it was MY mower since I picked it out, got it home from the store and use it everyweek! I think I took him a bit off guard. But it was totally true!

Reading about a totally new mower was fascinating! The eletric part was cool. As for up or down, I'm not sure. I all know is my last backyard and the huge hill I had to mow behind the fence killed my selfpropelled part of my engine so now I have a huge heavy non-selfpropelled mower I get to push along. I would take anything that was better than mine at this point.

Glad my yard isn't as big now, that we have had an incredibly dry summer and look forward to when I can buy a new machine.

Great post!
September 25, 2007 at 1:52 PM
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