Mow Town

Meditative rural pastime or endless destructive obligation?

You may have heard it through the grapevine that I destroyed my iPhone this weekend. I did so by running it over with the lawn mower.

This wasn’t even the first mower-related incident of the weekend. Thankfully no humans or vertebrates were injured in this round of follies (unlike Uncle Shorty’s childhood mower mishap, which claimed a finger tip).

Even though ~95% of our property is prairie, woods, or pasture, there is still an annoying and time consuming amount of mowing needed to keep the Midwestern summer jungle at bay. Some of this is accomplished by an electric push mower, some by small electric riding mower, some by Miss Otis (1950s era Ford 8N tractor), some by various weed whipping or hand trimming or machete-style mechanisms.

Especially early in the growing season there is plenty of soil moisture and enough sprightly leaf area for photosynthetic blowouts, which means mowing 3-4 hours each week between the yard and the prairie fire breaks. By late summer the grasses start getting thin and haggardly and there is approximately a 75% reduction in weekly mowing activities.

Our mowing habits barely keep us in line with rural yard etiquette or the clearance needed to contain prairie fires. Others around here mow with enthusiasm and commitment levels that we will never match. I assume this is some form of rural/suburban meditation that is a cost-effective surrogate for the time and money urbanites might spend on therapy or tai chi classes.

My first boneheaded episode this past weekend was on the tractor. It seems these incidents always happen towards the end of an endeavor, when you could have happily quit while you were ahead and reveled in the joy of a completed task. Instead, I thought “why not just zip along that brush pile before heading back to the barn?”

I knew there was a hose running along that area. I supposed the brush hog mower deck would easily clear it at about 6 inches above grade. I noticed something amiss approximately 0.5 seconds before the tractor jolted to stop. By then 150 feet of garden hose was tightly coiled around whatever the underbelly of a brush hog is comprised of. After getting the PTO into neutral, I restarted the tractor and dragged the brush hog around the yard hoping for a natural dip in the grade that would make it easier to extract the hose (the hydraulic lift on the mower only works if the PTO and blades are also turning).

Shortly after I parked over such a dip and feebly moved the hose end to and fro a few times, my sister appeared like an angel. She was already onsite for a visit, but of all the nearby humans she was by far best suited to join this unexpected mission. Cathy apparently noticed me from an upstairs window around this same time and wondered “Why is Jenny lying down in the yard like that?” She then investigated no further.

Sara and I spent roughly an hour feeding hose back and forth and over and under the front and back end of the brush hog. We foolishly thought it would get easier as we progressed. In the end, the hose was free, our arms were sore, the tractor was fine, and even the hose was fine.

Then the very next day after running the riding mower until the battery was nearly spent, I thought “why not just redo some of these rough patches before heading back to the barn?” At which point I chopped my iPhone to smithereens.

Same-day replacement of an iPhone in rural southwestern WI is not easy but not impossible. Buying yellow split peas is impossible, but that’s another story. It took 5 inventory checks, 2 hours of driving, and one sour mood. The kid at the store in the town of 12,000 said this wasn’t even the first lawnmower episode of the season. Apparently rural phone loss is seasonal — lawnmower chopping in the summer, snow bank and ice fishing hole dropping in the in the winter. Things quiet down in spring and fall.