I just bought a Craftsman reel mower off of our local "garage sale" Yahoo group. (The garage sale site sprang from our Freecycle group and is another great way to find useful used items.)
Our house sits on .75 acres with another .2 acre side lot, so you might think I'm crazy for trying to mow it with a non-motorized lawn mower. But I don't know. My powered lawn mower used to be a "nice" self-propelled gas mower, but the self-propel feature broke last year, was not fixed, and makes the power mower darn heavy. I figured if I have to push mow it anyway, why not use something lighter?
Plus avoid paying $3.85/gallon to MOW MY LAWN (an artifical environment to begin with). I need that money to drive kids to school.
Not to mention avoiding all the nasty carbon emissions.
And I could stand to lose
So it's a win-win-win and probably a few more wins I didn't think of.
I will say my old mower would rip through small twigs and pine cones like nobody's business, where the reel mower tends to get hung up on these. But the blocks are easily cleared and, after the first few tentative efforts, I no longer hear my Grandad's voice telling me, "Don't touch those blades; they'll take your finger right off!" (Thanks, Grandad! Miss you!)
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