Thinking like a mower

One of the Permaculture design principles is: "Use small and slow solutions."  Well, I think I've got the slow part down, at least when it comes to mowing our lawn.

We've always said that when the gas-powered lawn mower we'd bought from a friend a few years back got to the end of its useful life, that was when we'd consider going gas-free on our lawn.  Since we were only keeping gas around for the mower at this point, that would mean no need to keep a full gas can on the premises!  I was eager for that part.  But it was not until I seriously considered not repairing our ailing gas mower on this latest trip to the shop ($200 into a more-than-ten-year-old $500 Toro Super Recycler?  Iffy.) that I truly felt how culturally and emotionally dependent on gasoline I was.  This came to my awareness by way of a sensation of heat at the hairline on my neck and behind my ears (some form of flushing or embarrassment) every time I tried to think about life without a gas mower.  'Do we dare?', I wondered.  'Can we really get away with this?'  There was the thrill of possible escape, the hesitation to leave the known.

It seems silly, typing this now, that this kind of cultural importance can be attached to a form of manufactured hydrocarbon.  But think about what gasoline has meant to us over the major part of a century that it's been commonly available for amplifying our working power.  Think about what the machines designed to make use of it have replaced.  And most to the point right now, think about the way gas-driven tools have altered the patterns of use and maintenance we work out in our environs, what we assume is possible or practical to achieve, and what we think of as beautiful, or a job well done.  All of these are affected to varying degrees by the availability of gasoline and the assumption of people willing to purchase, use, and maintain or replace various common gas-driven machines.

Honestly, though, I must say that the gas machine assumption is quite an assumption, and it's exacted a pretty heavy toll.  I personally experience sensitivity to the byproducts of gasoline combustion every time I use a gas-powered lawnmower, or worse yet weedeater or chainsaw.  And I'm not the only one.  These small engines burn gasoline so dirtily that the polluting emissions from one hour of riding mower use is equivalent to traveling some incredible distance (crossing several states, if memory serves) in a Ford Explorer.  Some cities have times of day when it is illegal to operate a mower because of how much smog-forming gunk is already in the air and the disproportionate contribution small engines make to the problem.  Burning gasoline in our cars and trucks uses far more gas, and so is the greater culprit with regard to emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, but they tend to burn that gas much more cleanly and completely, so their contribution to classic "air pollution" is far less per gallon burned.  So I'm not just being a Luddite about this (although I am partially, of course).

Also, when it comes down to it, it is an unpleasant system that is at odds with our chosen lifestyle.  We have to drive a smelly gas can to town and back once or twice a year, and have to store an explosive liquid somewhere on our property at all times in order to make this work.  And speaking of smelly, you should smell my clothes when I'm done a few hours of making the yard pretty.  On the evening of mowing day I always feel grimy and compromised, even after my shower; my lungs feel irritated and I feel melancholy and depressed (partly from worrying about lung cancer).

All that is to say:  We had reasons.  To do what we did.  To abandon our trusty mower at the shop.  To try for the escape!  To buy an electric lawn mower.  Sorry about that little anticlimax there.

So we went to Lowe's and we bought a genuine Greenworks electric-powered 21 inch lawn mower.  It works GREAT!  When it's plugged in.  If you don't run over the cord.  Which no one has, yet.

If it wasn't until I'd considered moving away from gas that I felt my connection to it, then it wasn't until I actually tried getting the lawn mowed a different way that the patterns of assumption I'd been working with since I was twelve (and which my community had been working with since probably 1940) started to dawn on me for real.  I'd always known that a rural property like ours with a sizable kid play area, spread-out gardens with access paths, and a long driveway with a grassy middle and margins presented some serious obstacles to the would-be electric convert.  This, combined with my neighbor's reliable good-natured scrutiny and ribbing, was probably part of what was producing the heat at my hairline.

We knew that to even be able to mow the remote areas at all without owning a gas mower, we'd either have to borrow a gas mower every time or own a robust-enough portable electric mower (they exist if you can afford enough batteries to accomplish your job), unless we were willing to bite the really wacky bullet:  Portable Generator.  I know.  This is nuts.  I scrupulously turn up my nose at the gas-powered mower, going the virtuous if somewhat annoying electric route only to power the thing half the time with a hydrocarbon-sucker/spewer of another sort.  There is a catch, though:  I noticed a while back that Lowes carries a propane-powered generator.  OoooOOOOoooo!  With this item, I could operate power tools (including electric chainsaw and mower) ANYWHERE!  And if you don't use the fuel for a while, it doesn't go bad, it just sits there in the tank and waits for your command!  This is a bit of a sidestep to the face-off between the horde of gasoline-driven opportunities and my stubborn inner Luddite.  I admit that.  But it is what we decided to do.

In support of this option, we employed another Permaculture principle, namely that of multiple functions.  This one solution is not a solution to just one thing.  It would permit performance of a variety of tasks required for the kind of property use and maintenance we choose, it would allow for the performance of these tasks without the need for gasoline to be kept on hand, it would provide back-up power to our large freezers (holding precious victuals!) in the event of power failure, and it would do all this while burning way, way cleaner than any gas engine can.

So how's it going?  In a word:  Slow.  Mowing within range of the power outlets is not noticeably slower than the gas mower, or won't be once I fully get the hang of it.  But there is no denying that lugging that generator to a new position every two hundred feet or so is a cumbersome process.  I think there is no chance I can achieve the same mowing speed as the gas mower can enable.  Hoo boy.  I guess we're going to have to change our thinking (and THIS is where I think it gets interesting!)

It turns out that this choice to move away from gasoline (aside from the car) is going to, in itself, function in multiple ways.  I have now completed one whole mowing (in several sessions) with the electric mower; partly plugged into receptacles, partly with the generator.  Aside from the obvious and kind of mortifying slowness, there is a shift in assumptions already starting to take place, and I am provided with an opportunity to examine the old ones.  Why, for example, is the pull towards the traditional gas-powered mowing pattern so strong?  I'm so accustomed to making one pass around the perimeter of the yard and then making further concentric passes until there is a little patch of raggediness left and then finally...it's all the same!  Aaaaaah: tranquility!  Whence this tranquility, and how deeply has describing and executing this ordinary task so regularly affected my thinking?  Has it been more of a help or a hindrance in the making of my life?  All I know right now is that even though that pattern clearly makes no sense when you're tethered by a cord, it requires a bit of steely willpower to prevent myself from attempting it or to reverse course when habit has led me that way.

The whole way I'm used to seeing the surroundings of our house is threatened by this!  I can no longer zip around the perimeter of what I've delineated as "Our Yard" and then zero in on the middle, skirting around obstructions large and small and rendering everything within that loop a part of the same, evenly trimmed whole.  It's not that the electric cuts unevenly...it cuts exactly the same way as a gas mower.  It's that with being tethered to outlets or the generator, I am obliged to think about the places we've chosen to cut lawn as a series of nodes, with our managerial influence radiating from them, and connecting in some places, not in others.  Also, obstructions that are a mere annoyance with a gas mower become motion-altering obstacles (who can fathom--pun intended!--throwing the cord over a six foot shrub at every pass?) and so the yard gets divided into amoeboid lobes that sometimes converge behind the object and engulf it and sometimes don't.

Why does this matter?  Because the effect on my mind has already been that in a more real way than ever, "our property" seems to me a location that is spreading its influence out into the real world in nodes and patches, and that is also accepting in a similar way the presence and influence of the real world within its own region of dwelling.  It's as if this switch of mowing technique may be a major step towards the recognition of this place as an uncontained and open system, a system not so much described by a border or boundary, but rather by the magnetism and energy of home.

P.S. My sister's neighbor in Keezletown proper likes fixing up mowers for fun, so he went and picked up our old one at the shop.  He likes it so much he's making it his main mower!  Love it.

P.P.S.  After mowing today, I felt tired, but not beat.  I'm breathing peacefully, and I feel alert and cheerful.  My clothes didn't stink and my shower refreshed me.  Exactly how much inconvenience is that worth?

P.P.P.S.  We're looking into alternative (speedier!) ways to manage some of the remote mowing, such as a grass whip, more scythe work, etc.  Any ideas anybody has are welcome!  A little raggediness is o.k. so long as the functions are maintained.  We haven't completely ruled out the rechargeable electric mower, but we'd like to avoid it.