Going Green: The Old Fashioned Reel Lawnmower

Each of us are faced daily with decisions that can help nurture our planet instead of doing harm. We must choose, based on our own circumstances, what we can do to spare our home any additional hurt. I have, for most of my life, chosen those little things: driving an economy car, reusing plastic grocery bags, recycling aluminum cans, cutting the plastic can holders to minimize harm to our fowl population, planting and nurturing something green. Those little decisions have always been easy for me. The difficult decisions are those long-term commitments that will affect me for years.

I made the decision to buy a human powered lawnmower. My decision was, in part, a tribute to my grandfather. I have beautiful memories as a child, lounging in a lawn chair and watching Grandpa mow the lawn. The gentle 'swish, swish' of the reel type mower would invariably lull me to sleep. Those pleasant memories led me to start investigating the possibility of switching to a reel mower.

The reel type mower, for those who have never seen one, is an open cylinder with a blade that turns within that cylinder. The blades rotate as the mower wheels turn as a result of a push by, you guessed it, a human. The old reel mower that Grandpa used had a long roller at the back, similar to a large rolling pin, which flattened the grass after it was cut.

First I set off on a search for Grandpa's actual mower. None of the relatives had it - or at least none would admit it. One relative had a reel mower, but purported that it was so heavy that he was sure that I could not lift it into my economy car, much less push it across my lawn. So I hit the Internet researching the old fashioned mower. I was very pleased with the available variety of new reel mowers.