The Damn Lawn Is Going To Kill Me

[It has been several weeks… the lawn is shifting from Serengeti to Taiga. It doesn’t take long before nature sees the vacuum you’ve left.]

My lawn has been a struggle forever. I’ve got limited man hours and equipment to throw at the situation. I just can’t keep up. (Note: Curmudgeon Compound doesn’t have a pussy 1/10th acre manicured, irrigated, postage stamp like suburbanites. Nor is it “landscaping”.)

I have a couple acres that’s a demilitarized zone keeping the forest at bay. It’s huge and necessary but I don’t like wasting time on it. I just want the grass ankle length and that’s all that matters. I need to keep weeds, trees, bugs, forest fires, vermin, and communists from getting too close to my house. I don’t want to hear about some weak little battery powered outdoor Roomba in the comments; that shit might fly on a suburban tabletop of recently laid sod but my lawn will grab something like that and beat it to death.

I used to mow with my 1944 Ford 2n. Alas, it’s perpetually broke. Such a shame because it’s a joy to drive; slow and grand and smooth, fuel efficient and not too loud. With a decrepit old John Deere finish mower on the 3 point, it does a good looking job too (but only if I don’t let the grass get too deep). The real Achilles heel is that the old Ford takes X hours maintenance for every Y hours seat time and I just can’t spare it. (Ironically, I’ve discovered a 75 year old Ford probably takes less maintenance than a 6 year old Cub Cadet.)

Realizing I was tilting at windmills relying on a 75 year old machine for “production work” I caved. I bought a new Cub Cadet mower. Everyone congratulated me on my “realistic” solution to the perpetual lawn issue. “Hey, Curmudgeon, nice to see you finally bought a mower like a normal human instead of going on a vision quest. Isn’t life easier that way?”

NO! It’s not easier at all!

It’s easier for one year. A bit easier the second year. And then a long slow swirling of the drain until you think buying another piece of shit to replace your current piece of shit makes sense… and then the cycle starts again.

My riding mower has just one job and it has always sucked at it. (Actually its true job is to extract money from dumbasses… and it’s damn good at that.) The design is pure early 21st century disposajunk. (All mowers are similar. They all come from the same few factories with large overlaps in parts.. They’re all shit and the only variance is a few percent here and there.)

Specifically I hate the overrevved engine. It’s a Kawasaki that’s reliable and has plenty of power but it shrieks like a badger on crack getting beaten with bagpipes. That unholy racket harshes my mellow. Plus the mower (and all mowers) sports “lawyer-drive”. Lest some pinhead get hurt, the thing is designed to mechanically limit itself. It could high center on tick-tack. It’s perpetually bitching at me if I back up. If I shift in my seat it shuts down. I apparently live in a land of people who are always thinking of jumping off their shrieking POS mower and diving under the deck while it’s still spinning.

All those complaints apply when it’s functioning, a low bar beneath which it never fails to dive. It started taking a dump starting about year 2. I faithfully maintained it but there’s only so much you can do with a modern mower. Especially the damn deck… which is too expensive to replace and pretty flimsy for it’s intended purpose. It’s currently broke, broke not too long after I got it, whenever I fixed it it’d break again in 10-15 hours, it ate belts like a stoner with the munchies, had a mower deck made of hope, and pretty much annoyed me in expensive ways throughout it’s miserable lifespan.

This spring the repair guy started hinting that “they’re not made to last very long anyway”. I pushed the infernal shitbox into a corner of the garage and went camping.

No way in hell am I taking another ride on the failure train. One should never spend money with a business or product class that treats you like shit.

Soon… very soon… I’ll be applying a new solution. I’m gonna throw money at this situation and go big. I tried old, I tried normal, and now I’m going for Plan C: nuke it from space.

Stay tuned.

About AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Adaptive Curmudgeon is handsome, brave, and wise.
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26 Responses to The Damn Lawn Is Going To Kill Me

  1. Edward P says:

    So, short of all that is “Ford for sale, cheap” or am I missing something?

    If price is right a road trip from SW Michigan to wherever you are to pick it up might be doable. I like tinkering with old stuff and unless a casting is broken, it is likely repairable.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      It’s totally reparable. It just isn’t a “turn the key and go” kind of thing. It seems to always need a little TLC and I’m frantically busy during certain parts of the summer. Someday I’d like it restored to “parade proud” but that may have to wait until I’m retired.

  2. Ralph Boyd says:

    Kubota has worked for me. BX1870, small but mighty! 3-point, 3 blade 56″ mower, loader, diesel, cast iron. It helps me keep my 2 acres of Florida jungle tamed.

  3. Nukes? Cowabunga! Or maybe goats.

  4. another Jim says:

    A flame thrower for controlled burns could be just the thing!

  5. my name is eli says:

    Was out of the country once for 10 months on a 6 month deployment in the name of God and country.
    Came home to a $6K JD, 48″ deck, 19H Kawasaki Commercial grade Zero Turn.
    That was 15 yrs ago.
    I’ve replaced the deck clutch once, the fuel pump goes about every 24 mo, and I rotate 3 sets of blades through it. Tires when _someone_ runs into …stuff.
    Going from a little Yanmar diesel with 60″ finish mower to this cut my time from 3+ hrs to 1.5 hrs.
    But I wouldn’t get it if I knew I needed to cut weeds in pastures and such, these aren’t built for it.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      I tried zero turn (rented one). Super fun to drive but not as solid as finish mower implement on a tractor. Finish mower seemed to handle uneven ground better. I think most mowers (zero turn or regular) “make up time” with speed… and that has me bouncing all over the place and seems harder on the gear. Plus I’m looking for a tractor because I’ve got to move snow in winter. Glad you got 15 years out of your zero turn though… if I thought one would hold up that long for me I’d drop $6K on it today.

      BTW: Thank you for your service.

  6. Ralph Boyd says:

    It just occurred to me that you only have a month until winter at your latitude. You really don’t need to cut grass, you should start worrying about snow!

  7. Eric Wilner says:

    Next season, I’ll be in charge of mowing about 2 acres of semi-respectable lawn (the hayfield is somebody else’s problem). Part of it has enough slope that I don’t think I’d want to take it on with, e.g., one of those subcompact tractors with a mower deck. Also, there are a lot of obstacles to maneuver around.
    So, been pondering ZTR mowers, mainly for the low center of gravity. The Ariens Ikon X/XL line seems to stand out in terms of getting good reviews, but I have yet to look at one in person. And I haven’t encountered any after-five-years reviews.
    There’ll also have to be a tractor, of course. With a loader. Still dithering between subcompact and compact, but decision time is a couple of months off, and I’ll need to take a bunch of measurements at the yet-distant destination before deciding.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      It may help you to know that 20 hp subcompacts are free of certain EPA restrictions shoved up the ass of 20+ HP compact tractors. That is, if you can get by with a subcompact you’ll save more than you would if EPA wasn’t distorting the market. Count on the EPA to buzzkill every damn thing that’s fun to operate. Of course, if you need more HP you need it and you’ll just have to pay a bit more… which as far as I can tell is a feature not a bug to the EPA.

      • Eric Wilner says:

        I think the EPA threshold is 26 HP, so there’s a proliferation of ~24 HP subcompacts that don’t need the extra $1K or so of cruft and attendant complications.
        But, I may want a heavier machine than that – not so much more power as more size, more capable loader, etc.
        And maybe, come shopping time, there’ll be some suitable few-years-old machine for sale.

        • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

          Whoops, I knew the HP cutoff was thereabouts but I missed the actual number. Of course, there’s no replacement for horsepower at some point. It’s a tractor… to do work.

          I really hate how the EPA recklessly makes every damn mechanical device a huge PITA. They make up a rule and engineers have to face it whether it makes sense or not. It always pushes us toward smaller, weaker, more complicated vehicles when I like big and simple. I swear they’re going to turn us into Cuba where everyone is limping along in a 50 year old car because the new ones are too expensive. On the other hand, I like the idea of things that last a long time. Maybe they’re going to slowly counteract the disposajunk that is marketed new. Every time there’s a new EPA reg I take a little better care of the old stuff I’ve got… it’s becoming (literally!) irreplaceable.

  8. Robert says:

    Cub Cadet. Wow. Dad bought his cute little Cadet tractor in about ’67 for mowing and gardening and plowing snow. It died (a broken drive-train-something, not worth fixing) a couple of years before we lost Dad in 2006. “They don’t make ’em like they usta” seems to be true of both man and machine. The tractor still sits in the garage along with the mower deck and both plows as I can’t seem to make myself part with them for some unknown reason. I keep telling myself I’ll get it running some day…

    AC, you don’t know what memories you brought up with yer rant. Don’t ever stop bitchin’ about lawns and mowers and quality. Damn dusty in here.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      Keep those parts. Someday you may get a chance to fix it. And if you don’t… let your successor deal with cleaning out the garage. 🙂

      It is true they don’t make ’em like they used to, a good ’67 that gets restored in 2019 might outlast a new mower that’s purchased in 2019. Or at least that’s my experience with mowers. I’m not sure about the big tractors. The old ones last forever but lack handy features (and mine needs lots of time with a wrench). The new ones have electronics and EPA shit… but most seem to last a decent interval. I guess time will tell.

      I’ll probably never stop bitching about my lawn so long as I have one. SO you don’t have to worry about that.

  9. Robert says:

    ETA: all those friggin’ lawyer-safety crap things are disabled on the Cub’s successor and, AFAIK, didn’t exist on the Cub. I suspect this is because people weren’t SJW-idiots ‘way back when and we knew Darwinism was overall good for the human race. And, as a teenager, if I -hypothetically- did something stupid to cause myself to get run over by a wide-open tractor, well, that woulda been my own fault and stupid should hurt in order to make the lesson stick.

  10. Daddy Hawk says:

    (Making popcorn) This is going to be epic. I’ve missed the tractor rants more than I’ve missed the squirrel saga (which I’m still waiting for a return of the squirrels by the way).

  11. Tom MacGyver says:

    I have an acre of part-lawn, part whatever grows out of dust in 105* heat. I have something with a John Deere sticker on it to keep the lawn tamed and the tumbleweed at bay. There’s a dead-man switch for everything. I can’t FART without shutting off the engine. The spindles on the mower deck crap out once or twice a year. Forget about sharpening the blades! The desert dust and sand whittles them down to pen knives after a few months! The damned drive belt falls off every other time I engage the mower. I shut off, reseat the belt, jump on, start the engine, and watch the belt jump off again. Lather, rinse, repeat… Yeah; I feel your pain!

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      WTF is it with shitty lawnmowers? Surely mankind hasn’t lost the technical ability to make one that isn’t garbage… yet the evidence suggests we’re slowly losing it.

  12. James says:

    AC, you owe me a phone. The badger thing had me laughing so hard I dropped my phone on the tile floor. Jesus, where do you come up with this stuff?

    BTW, winter is coming. It was 38 degrees F this morning my place. August is the new September.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      Nooooooo…. last winter kicked my ass. I want a loooooooong summer and a longer autumn.

      No idea where analogies about badgers come from but it’s better to let such thoughts out than keep ’em to myself. Also, just listen to a modern lawnmower… it’s an unholy racket! Machines should sound properly machine-ish… not like they’re one lost bearing away from a meltdown.

      Don’t replace the phone. Hire someone to print out my blog and mail it to you. Get a SPotX with texting and tell everyone you’re on safari. That’s close enough to off grid that they’ll think you’re a guru. 🙂

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