If you’ve spent most of your life in a city, there is probably one thing you haven’t used: a ride-on lawn mower.
Prior to moving to the country, Holly and I used to think that the less than half acre city lots we had with our detached homes felt big, huge even, compared to the apartment balconies we had in many places we’d lived before. Yet even these lawns were easily tamed with a small electric push mower; it took one charge of the battery and usually less than an hour.
Of course, nearly 4 acres is much more lawn to mow, even when some of it is treed. For the first couple months of summer, we really let the grass go a bit wild as mowing even the smaller part of the lawn close to our house took 3 or 4 battery charges and just as many hours. This, truly, would just not do!
So after a bit of research, we settled on getting a lawn tractor, which is mainly a ride-on lawn mower, but also, you can get attachments for things like plowing snow or towing small trailers.
We were excited, and admittedly, a little nervous to give this thing a try, but we knew it would be light years better than trying to use a push mower on our whole yard. That being said, at this point, the grass beyond the house was really tall, and it was going to be quite a bit of cautious work to get the job done.
First though, we had to get the lawn mower! It was delivered all wrapped up and on a wooden palette just at the end of June. It also wasn’t fully assembled, and before we could get it off the palette, we had to hook up the battery and put the seat on, as well some other bits and knobs. This took…a lot longer than we anticipated. Should it have been that complicated? Probably not, but by the time we had finished, it was too late to mow that day, and we also realized it was kind of stuck on the palette as it was quite high off the ground. We ended up having to run out to the store and pick up some loading ramps to be able to get it off. We left it parked in the yard, and now, finally, we were ready!
Mid-afternoon the following day, Holly decided to take the first go at it. We had also picked up all the necessary safety gear in our earlier run to the store: shatter-proof sunglasses and sound-cancelling ear protection – fancy Bluetooth ones that you can sync to your phone to listen to music while you mow. So really, it sounded like a pretty decent job – take a little ride around the yard, jam to some music, and make the lawn look real nice again (not to mention, we were hoping it’d cut down on the mosquitoes and flies).
It took a few tries (and a YouTube video) to get the thing running, but once we knew the right order of things, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of. There were some other things to do around the yard, plus some spots I’d have to get with the push mower that the ride-on wouldn’t fit, so I got busy with those other tasks as Holly got going.
I can’t recall how much time had passed, but it must have been 30 minutes to an hour, when I heard a horrendous clanging noise and the hum of the lawn mower abruptly stopped. My first thought being that some rock or piece of metal got clogged up in the blades, or the mower broke down, or some piece fell apart.
I went running to the front yard where I saw Holly sitting on the mower at the top of the embankment, nearly on the road that runs in front of our house, and it was also then that I noticed the sign post with our fire number was…no longer standing at the end of our driveway. I think Holly must have been in shock from the ordeal, but I could also tell she was in a lot of pain. The first thing she asked me: “WHERE’S MY LEG?” To which I can only go, “It’s still attached. I promise.”
With how tall the grass had gotten, it had been impossible to see that there was a slope in the ground near the post, and the lawn mower had tipped a little, which then got the post caught between Holly’s leg and the mower, and with her leg being held in place, she wasn’t able to brake right away, which meant the sign pulled her leg back, and the lawn mower sped forward, until finally the post was yanked down and under the mower (hence the horrible noise). She had just managed to stop the mower right at the top of the small hill after that.
Her leg was in pretty bad shape, and she could barely get off the lawn mower, let alone walk back to the house, but I did my best to help her inside and get her sitting and resting. The bruise this disaster left was big, and it’s stuck around until this day (3 months later!). Needless to say, I did end up finishing the rest of the lawn that day.
However, Holly is a champion, and this incident hasn’t stopped her once from getting right back on that mower and tackling the lawn mowing every single time! But let this be a lesson to anyone new to ride-on mowers or just managing large areas of lawn in general, make sure you get a sense of the terrain before you get on the mower, especially if you’re used to a push mower that can be pretty forgiving.
Rainbow River Alpacas 