Notwithstanding the snow which is a bit unexpected in the (midst of global warming) on the upper East Coast this week, it is time to get real about what comes with Spring. Besides “Hey! Hey First of May, Outdoor (ahem) starts today!”
Unfortunately what really starts about now is yard work.
I’ve got at least 57-years of first hard experience. Starting at age 10 when pappy put me at the controls of a 19” Toro and told me the only instruction most men ever hear about mowing: Don’t mow up and down a will, mow sideways. Too easy to slip and hack a toe off.
As if to prove the point, one day Pappy came in the house and pointed to a 1” long slice in the toe area of his shoe. “See this? This I why I told you don’t mow up and down the hill.” He had a kind of sheepish look and the skin was just barely broken, but enough so that he realized that even he, Pappy, was not immune to the laws that kill people. Thereafter, he was much more careful, besides watching me closely.
The first truisms about Yard Work that need to be put aside are as follows.
YARD WORK HEIRARCHY:
1. Live on a sailboat, have no yard. If there is anything green or flowery around, it is the marina’s problem.
I would like to thank the Port of Seattle Shilshole Bay Marina for the 11-years I lived aboard my 40’ sailboat, over half of it there. They did a remarkable job of keeping the waves trimmed (installing the breakwater is what did it). And only once or twice along 600-feet of dock out to the end did I ever see anything growing. Maybe an odd see dropped by a bird and then fertilized by seagulls.
Half a dozen inch-long blades in 600 feet in 5 or 6 years is a great start.
2. The second best thing is to do what Mom and Pappy did when the grew up (never fully): The moved into a common-wall townhouse.
Every week the yard was done, the sidewalk out front was swept or blown clean. Edging was done monthly.
Miraculously, outside maintenance like painting happened – as if by magic – and when came time to pay the HOA dues, Pappy was always prompt in order not to interrupt the flow of things.
Long-time readers will remember his other great Yard Work advise: Never plant a garden bigger than your wife can maintain. This year, we don’t have a garden in because Elaine’s too busy on other projects and I’m a good student of management science.
3. Have kids. Live in a house.
Sooner, or later, the kids will want to “play house” for a while. Start them off with a few menial tasks, but attach a high value reward to it. Food works at first, but eventually, you will have to toss in cash (first choice) or car keys.
Mind you, I never had to suffer through the car keys in return for Yard Work. I’d gotten divorced before that and had already moved onto the sailboat. See #1.
4. Live in a House. Find Neighborhood kids.
This one is a bit of a tradeoff. I will never let anyone who is not a member of immediate family (even Panama’s new wife isn’t allowed to use power tools or big equipment) simply because we live in a litigious world and the idea of losing a lifetime of work to a (yuck!) lawyer is not very appealing.
Whenever anyone not directly related does anything, we lead into that with a Waiver of Liability.
Should you do this if the lazy, no-good, 16-year old across the street is willing to do a slap-dash mowing for gas money?
Hell yes. When you get into Court, should anything go wrong, you’re going to be made to look the part of Scrooge dishing out porridge to the poor. The little bastard, all covered with tats and vaping himself into oblivious while barely able to remain in school will be pictured as the victim of your ill-maintained equipment.
Jury awards kill. So avoid them. Use blood relatives only, and simplify life considerably.
5. As an absolute last resort (especially now that baseball season has started) you can turn on a game and try to visualize yourself mowing an adjacent outfield. Several beers will aid in this delusion.
If beer and delusion is not your cup of tea, you can pick up a pair of
ClearArmor 141001 Safety Ear Muffs Shooters Hearing Protection Folding-Padded Head Band Ear Cups, Black (Certified S3.19 & EN352) for about $25 bucks from Amazon. Then you can drive around saying “AAAuuuuuummmmmmmmm” to your little hearts content.
You will also want a good selection of masks. If you’re a hee-person, a simple box of Topro Disposable Cleaning Molded Face Masks- Pack of 100pcs is a fair start.
However, blessed with asthma since birth, I prefer something a little more upscale like the 3M Particulate Respirator 8233, N100 which will cost a LOT more. But if you pop a Diphenhydramine HCI 25 Mg – Kirkland Brand – Allergy Medicine and AntihistamineCompare to Active Ingredient of Benadryl® Allergy Generic – 600 Count for $8.36 (for 1.4 cents per turn around the yard) you will be able to be terribly relaxed as well as enjoying peace and quiet.
While it is widely promoted that “buzz driving is drunk driving” slightly medicated mowing is…well…mowing.
The other thing to line up in your power tools.
We’ve standardized on the Black and Decker 20V series. So we have a chain saw, hedge trimmer and the Factory-Reconditioned Black & Decker LST220R 20v MAX Lithium String Trimmer that all use the same battery pack.
Did I mention as a tool slut that I LOVE reconditioned tools?
Order of Battle
This is one I have seen debated, but around here, the best approach seems to be going about things from messiest to neatest.
So when I go out this week and lay into the yard (just bush hogging the whole open areas is an all-day job and 9-gallons of diesel) it will be with the idea that the bush hogging (brush cutting) will happen first.
Then the wild things on the fence will meet with the hedge trimmer and a quick demise.
Then, if I find a few extra hours, I will do what Texans proudly call “limbing-up” the property.
The idea is that you walk around on the ground and cut off limbs that you’d run into on the tractor as a first pass. Then you mount up on the tractor and drive around and cut the next level up, stopping to stand on the tractor, or use the bucket like a lift, so that when you’re done, you have a nice open area under the trees which will be shady – encouraging some breezes.
More importantly, however, that “{limbing-up” will keep any grass fires (common now and then) from getting up into the trees and “crowning” – which is when the fire jumps from the dry pine needles of one tree to another.
All in all, if you do the limbing up with the brush forks on the bucket, you can round up the big stuff pretty quickly.
Then, if you’re in a nice area, you bring the riding mower around with the dump trailer and throw things in that.
If you’re not in a nice area, you say “Screw this…” and you just run the Bush Hog over the pile a few times and now you’ve got wood mulch.
A Word About Chippers
I’ve developed real mixed feelings about wood chippers. This came after using a smallish 5 HP one for a while, then an 8 HP one and sometimes I find myself looking at one I could lash onto the 3-point power take-off on the tractor.
Here’s the trade-off in simple terms.
Sometimes when you have a lot of wood, the easiest thing to do is put a match to a couple of gallons on diesel and motor oil sloshed around on the fire. This is good and certainly makes the wood disappear.
If you leave it as mulch, chipped up fine and put it on thick enough, it is a great anti-weed layer in the garden. Except it’s a bunch of work that you don’t need to do because we can go out and in 2-minutes line up a lifetime supply of pine needles.
Which then gets us to the pathways which I have seen people install using chips.
They look really nice, a easy to walk on, but to get enough chips to do a good job sometimes is a little tough in the city.
Out here in the Outback, every so often power line crews will have a contractor going along and cleaning the power line right of ways. They will usually be glad to drop a pickup load (or many) in your yard gratis. Well, or a cold Bud, maybe.
The main thing about Yard Work is to have the right tools. A minimum kit for a big piece of property is:
- Small diesel tractor with Brush cutter
- Large gas chainsaw for real trees
- Electric chainsaw for 6” and smaller problems
- Hedge trimmer to keep things out of fence lines
- String trimmer for edging and cut-in work
- Riding mower depending on size of useable yard
- Push mower (gas or electric depending on size)
- Fertilizer dispenser (wheeled)
- Grass seed spreader (hand held)
- And assortment of hose all on hose reels (beats hell out of hand coiling and is neater)
- And plenty of time and refreshments.
- Don’t forget the ear muffs and safety glasses and dust masks.
I know there is probable not too much on this list you don’t already have, but it’s a list to review at the start of the season.
Nothing will “tickify me” more than not having all my gear and all the spares and launch into the spring ready to beat the living shit out of Ma Nature’s winter vengeance. Being marginally ADHD, by the time Brent the UPS driver gets here with the missing pieces, I’ve lost interest in the yard.
Until next year. Then I’m likely as not to get all riled-up, again. But maybe it’ll pass again then, too….
P.S. If you’re a lawyer, how about sharing a release of liability for yard work done by local kids we might hire?
Write when you break-even,
The N-100 mask is also good against viruses, good things to have some extras of.
Thanks a lot for reminding me to get up off my arse and do some work
That’s quite OK – if you have some extra time, I pay $10 an hour to tractor drivers, lol
Dont forget the tick and chigger spray. Anything with a high % of Deet. Up here at El Rancho de Chaos we have ticks big enough to try and pull you off the tractor as you mow on by. If you listen really closely at night you can hear them talking.
Good morning George,
I sold my one acre two home property in January and bought a ground level condo with a patio that opens to a very large park area with grass and mature trees. Nice to sit with a glass of wine and watch someone else do the yard work after decades of doing it myself.
Cheers,
Paul
Scottsdale, AZ
Pretty much have the same tool list except 2 gas chain saws (for firewood) and log splitter. The way we reduce brush hog time is that over half our property is woods, running along most of the property edges. They are mixed hardwoods and when leaves are up no one can see the house, in winter from a few spots you can maybe make out there is something there but not what. I don’t touch them, left for wildlife they are impassible to any vehicle without a lot of work, and along the road its so boggy there that my gator gets stuck unless the ground is frozen. Add the bramble patches that run thick along the wood edges I have a low maintenance security barrier. We mow around the house and use the brush hog in the pastures when the donkeys can’t keep up with the growth. Use a torch along the fences to keep them clear. Almost fifty inches annual rainfall means threat of brushfires is very low. Have worked hard to develop the arrangement that reduces our maintenance labor. YMMV
James Johnson
Make your immediate areas possum friendly. They eat ticks by the paw full. Skin so Soft sprayed on your pants does a good job in keeping them off. The little suckers seemed to have evolved: they now drop off of trees.
After growing up on a farm in Iowa & spending most of my Saturdays from age 10-18 mowing, I am a fan of option #6: move to Phoenix, buy house with desert landscaping. A couple times a year (about 3-4 days after it rains) you have to pull about 9-10 weeds. Avoid planting messing foliage (I’m looking at you, bougainvillea) and you are all set to just relax on the patio, and you don’t actually have to share walls or your outdoor space with your neighbors.
Awesome collection of resources for a once a year job. Take a look at how much of all that crap was imported, and you will understand why the USA trade deficit just set a record. Then think about how much all of that would cost if it was manufactured in the USA with USA labor costs and USA overhead. Face it, more than half of Americans can only afford to buy American products if they are produced by prison labor.
I have yet to meet a USA resident who gets it that the USA lifestyle is subsidized with exploited foreign labor and stolen resources.
Let me illustrate how this works. In order for the African French colonies to be granted independent nationhood without a war, they were forced to sign an agreement that they would offer all exported goods and commodities to France with first right of refusal, at the price that France offered. Since the 1960’s France has been subsidized to the tune of $40 billion a year under this agreement, and this continues today.
So when I hear of a terrorist bombing in France by North African Muslims, I don’t exactly reach for a hanky.
When it comes to grass- less is more. As in better to mow 30 minutes than 2 hrs. Those pine needles look great and suppress the grass just fine.
Alas I live in WA and at this time of year I am dodging rain showers and picking up 40 acres of Doug Fir limbs courtesy of several wind storms this last Winter,, It is a yearly disaster if you have Fir trees,
For tics, fleas and small snakes I use free range chickens. Got to watch them as dogs and critters love them. Don’t forget to fence off the porch as chicken poop belongs in the garden not between your toes.
Re Release of Liability: Not really worth the paper it’s written on. Just because you say you’re not liable doesn’t mean you’re not liable. Similar to the parking lot signs that tell you they’re not responsible for (fill in the blanks) happening to you or your vehicle. They are (or can be), but hope that you won’t try because you’ve read the signs and believe them. Same thing here: you’re hoping that because they signed it, they’ll not sue. Guess again.