Boycott Lawns

Hi there! I'm back for a minute.

Waste not want not...
Still got to keep those pasture-fields cut occasionally to keep down the weeds. SO...
When I DO mow, I rake up every damn bit for either mulch for the garden or hay for the hopefully-near-future milk cow. I'm thinking that about late fall to mid winter folks will finally start to figure out they really can't afford to feed their livestock and a milk cow might just be a bit cheaper by then. Next on the wish list is a small team of horses to mow with next summer instead of the tractor! Then they can cut their own hay...
Other than that, I filled up the biggest part of the front yard with flowering bushes and evergreens, added a second garden, and let the road frontage go wild... Unfortunately the mail carrier must have thought the virginia creeper on the mailbox post was poison ivy and they SPRAYED POISON WEED KILLER all over the ground by the mail boxes and my chicken coop!

 

bad mailman! bad!

no donuts for him!

 

I don't have a lawn, just natural grasses, trees and "weeds".

 

You gotta hate it when someone sprays poison next to your mail box, what were they thinking? As if that's harder than carrying a pair of pruners around--which reminds me I best get out to the mail box and trim back the honeysuckle ASAP lest the "weed fascists" come 'round my way, lol!

The guy who turned me on to the scythe sent me on my way with a couple dozen of his ginea fowl eggs along with a tasty bag of skunk bud. He was telling me about a guy he knows who sells eggs and front lines his birds, can you imagine? The birds eat the ticks, yet somehow he feels they need to be protected, so now he's got poison in his eggs, which he sells to the general public, pretty scary.

What if instead of all this hype about a chemically altered, superficially healthy lawn we could focus on something more practical, like growing bud in the yard? Instead of competing for the greenest lawn, we'd be trying to grow the biggest, skunkiest buds. Everyone would be laid back and happy, less violent, and it would give new meaning to the notion of the grass being greener, lol.

 

or even just the best vegetables/etc.

oh yeah, we did that 70-80 years ago (and in some places, still do) with county fairs...we actually had someone locally fined for having a garden in his subdivision, because the neighbors could see it and called it a 'tangled mess'. So the homeowner's association fined him for it.

ridiculous.

 

So it's been a while, just wanted to check in. I finally got the scythe, and it is sweet, the blades are quality, and they included a book and a jig to keep the blades sharp, now I just need to put the thing together and start using it. Mind you, I have not mowed my yard since I started this thread, so it's overgrown after the rain we've been having, but I think I can handle it. The goats 'll be happy.

Now I can get up early on the weekend and get it done while there's still dew on the grass (the sycthe works better when the grass is wet). That way it's still cool, and I don't have to worry about bugging the neighbors with the noise. Now if I can just talk my neighbors into getting rid of their mowers and using a scythe...

 

I've thought that same thing for a long time... Why all these starving people when we could be growing fruits, veggies and grains as far as the eye can see?? Rather than all this "cut your grass or we'll run you out of town" bullshit. God help me if I am ever forced to live in the suburbs again... I'd probably kill someone.

 

I agree with you. We spend far too much time worrying about the appearance of our lawns. I personally think it'd be really awesome to have a lawn consisting entirely of moss.

 

That would be pretty... and so soft to walk on.

 

feet friendly would be wonderful.

btw, firefly, I like your sig pic...I wish I could get my female friends to understand that whole 'now we're adults, we can make our own rules about our relationships' expression of logic.

 

So I finally got the scythe put together, read the book on how to use it and maintain it, and I took it out this morning for the first time. It was great! Six thirty am, the rest of the family's asleep, and the scythe's smoothly taking down the long grass, swish, swish. I still have quite a ways to go after almost two months of growth. The weeds are so big I'm gonna have to break out the ditch blade, but we'll git 'er done...

 

It's amazing, isn't it. Ordinary work, work that puts us in 'order' with nature's patterns and rhythms, can be the most satisfying and joyful thing in the world, or can be an utter hell, just depending on the tools used.

 

Yes it is. And to think we waste so much energy in the pursuit of the technology that degrades our spirit, when we can be so much happier being in touch with the primitive, simple part of our nature.

Perhaps in the morning I'll get up early and finish the job, not that I'm in any hurry, but it sure is nice to embellish the cool morning dew of the dawn...

Swish, swish...

 

my friend, right now, I envy you substantially. A home, a family, the countryside for company. I congratulate you.

 

Well thank you, it wasn't easy getting here, and sometimes it's not easy being here, but at the moment I'm pretty damned content with what I've got, which is more than I can say for most of the folks I know.

One of my closest friends dropped by with his kids the other day. He's one of those minimalist types who's really resourceful, y'know, a guy who gathers other people's junk and turns it into gold. A true artisan who majored in sculpture in college, and builds just about everything himself, blew glass for a while, worked at a micro-brewery back before they caught on. Anyway, he was so impressed with the scythe after he took a few strokes he's gonna order one now, since it's so much better than the one he's got. Talk about living up to the Jones', I think my buddy's got scythe envy, lol!

Now if only we could get the scythe more main stream we could eliminate a lot of the energy demand, noise pollution, and obesity that plagues us. I mean, it ain't exactly the answer to whirled peas, but it's a start...

 

Mellow, I'm much like your friend, I'm into blacksmithing and materials recycling (small scale) and when I've got a workspace, I can take 'junk' and one way or another make most of the tools I need, from spades, to forks and knives to plows to whatever. I'm not as experienced as an 'old school' blacksmith, mind, but I've a decent hand at it. I'd like to be able to make a living doing handmade tools, as it feels like a 'right livelihood' for me, but there's not much call for it anymore.

 

Pretty impressive those old school skills, which were once the foundation of any community, but have since fallen by the way side due to lack of perceived value.

The dude who turned me on to the scythe to begin with was telling me about a seminar up in Maine (or was it Canada) in which a bunch of hippies get together for a weekend, camp out on the land, and learn from an old master how to forge the blades. 'Sounds pretty cool to me.

Give a man a good tool, and he'll prosper till the tool breaks. Show a man how to make a good tool, and he'll prosper forever.

 

ayup. with the following waiver 'provided he has a place to build the tool which won't get him arrested for violating some obscure and arcane law'

I need a forge...I'm actually about >< this close to going utterly batsht. Metalwork's therapy for me as well, and I'm getting a bit...twitchy without it. And where I live..there's fire codes, building codes, loose kids, crazy crackheads who'd rob my shop blind...it's not worth it to try and set up here. Between the 'official' interference and the yokels who'd either rob me or trash my tools...(shakes head)

I feel a little frustrated, you know?

It's part of why I'm working to improve my money earning ability, so I can earn enough to abandon this rat race. I'm not THAT fond of cheese. I'd rather have a hammock and a glass of lemonade after working around 2000F metal all day.

 

I live on a small farm, we have a very very tiny patch of grass I suppose you could call a "Lawn". We actually mow it with one of those ole reel mowers, no engine, just human power. We added several raised bed to make the yard smaller, now its full of veggies and flowers. Our old above ground pool is now our watering source for the veggies as well, fed with water from our roof. I do mow some of our pasture fields with a pull behind bush hog and four wheeler, very steep and what I can't do with that, I mow with my mowing schythe. And yes, it does help when the weeds are wet with the morning dew. No neighbors closer than half a mile or so.
Outside right now I can hear only the birds chirping, a slight breeze thru the pine trees. This is paradise!
Keep on keepin on guys....
Peace.. Farmout

 

I hear ya man, I did some time in the city, and don't even get me started about the bureaucracy of building codes, I'm in the process of building a kitchen, but it's going well, as I've over built the shit out of the place, so now I'm in the good graces of the building inspector.

The point is if you've got a vision, and a plan to get there, eventually you will, it's just a matter of paying your dues and doing your time. But you gotta keep that vision alive for it to happen.

I've been reading more about the scythe, it seems to be an ideal tool to harvest grains and such, and once you get good at it, it's a much more intelligent tool than, say, a weed whacker that cuts down anything in its path without giving you any way to choose what you cut down, while leaving hunks of that shitty plastic string everywhere, racking your body with the vibrations and your ear drums with the noise.

Right on. I share your vision.