Cutting to the Chase

I have a birthday coming up, although it is still just over two weeks away. Meanwhile last weekend Vera and I hosted a party here at the farm -- something I mentioned here a week ago we were about to do.

While it wasn’t really a birthday party, it sort of was treated as one given the proximity of the date. By which I mean there was cake and some singing, and my seven-year-old nephew hilariously yelling out with incredulity when he learned just how old his uncle is going to be. There was also a gift for your humble scribbler, a really nice one -- a big, commercial grade zero turn riding mower.

We have 15 acres here, and while we mow the pastures with the tractor (attaching a mower), that still leaves more than half of that to take care of in other ways. I’d been using a John Deere riding mower, a fine machine but not really enough for so much mowing.

I sometimes joke that I have to mow “the whole nine yards” because there are almost that many yard-sized areas that need taking caring of, and with the John Deere I basically was always having to start over again every time I got to the end of mowing everything.

Anyhow, the new mower -- a Ferris -- was a complete surprise, set up by Vera with practically everyone except me knowing it was going to be delivered at the party last weekend. The timing (three weeks before my birthday) helped with the surprise, as I surely wasn’t expecting anything.

This week I’ve already mowed most of the property with it, with the increased speed, the wider cut, and the ability to make that turn-on-a-dime reducing the time at least in half, and in fact probably more than that.

I realized after finishing up one of the large sections yesterday how the new mower made it so easy it also (almost) cut into that sense of satisfaction that would come after having cut the lawn before (something I wrote about here once a while back).

Almost feels like looking up the answer to some problem -- say, a poker-related query -- rather than figuring it out on your own. Or watching just the highlights of a game rather than the whole thing, cutting to the chase (as it were).

Then again, even with the big mower, it’s still work. And frankly, it only frees me up time-wise to do more work on the farm, of which there really is no end. Which isn’t such a bad thing -- more problems to solve, things to get done, satisfaction to be had.