The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Mowing therapy

Grass going to seedIf Mark and I seem a bit flaky this week, it's because we're planning a big party for four or five dozen of our closest friends and relatives on Saturday.  We figured we owed them a get-together for running off to get married in secret last December.  My original goal was to grow a lot of the food for the picnic ourselves, but it seemed that every crop I earmarked for the party --- tomatoes, potatoes, etc. --- failed miserably.  So we've been buying a lot of food, and tidying up the farm so that it looks more presentable.

Throwing a party for masses of people where I'll have to be the center of attention is up there on my list of nightmares (right after being a long distance truck driver, in case you're curious.)  So I've been using mowing therapy to keep myself calm.  My favorite method of mowing is to spend time up front getting the difficult edges so that I can then walk in easy circle after circle, ending up smack dab in the center of the area.  I wish it was so simple to find the exact center of worry circles....

Since this is a homesteading blog, not an angst blog, I'll end with a little factoid.  We took the mulching bag off the mower for my therapy this week because the grass is starting to go to seed.  As someone (Everett?) warned us when we first got our mower, grass clippings only make great mulch when there are no weed seeds involved!  If your lawn is made up of cool season grasses, chances are they're going to seed now too, so put those clippings in the worm bin or on the compost pile (or just let them fall back down and feed the lawn.)

This post has been brought to you by Mark's awesome homemade chicken waterer.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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