Cutting grass

It’s that time of year; the grass is taller than I am and much of it has gone to seed so it’s time to start cutting it. I suspect most folks have already been doing this for a while; we have been, one cut so far, though the lovely late rains have meant at least one more and likely two more cuts.

We have a lot of grass to cut. Mostly we use a pull-behind mower that we drag around with one of the quads. It does a good job, not quite like a regular lawn mower, but we can get more places with it than when we used the tractor to mow and it goes faster as well. It can be touchy - the belt likes to pop off now and then, as it did on Friday afternoon when I ran it for an hour, mainly cutting the tall grass around the horse pastures (one area I do not have to mow, thankfully). I needed to be able to walk in and out of the pastures every day, so an hour of mowing accomplished that and then some. But at one point I looked back and there was a whole swath uncut, so that meant it was time to quit and find someone stronger than I am to put the belt back on.

I also mowed the actual lawn, a small somewhat weedy patch in front of the house, over the weekend. We have a decent lawn mower, though the self-driving feature no longer works. It means wrestling the mower around a bit, so you get more of a workout; it also accomplished throwing my back out a bit, sigh. The finished produce is quite nice, though. We recently fenced the chickens out of the front yard and the plants are looking so happy now.

I spent part of Saturday and today, Monday, on big ranches that are for sale in the County. Both have glorious waving fields of grass - especially with the nice breezes we’ve been having. Of course, someone will have to cut a lot of that grass, though in one case at least there’s livestock who will work on that too. I love the lush spring greenness that we get here. It will be short-lived, I think, with the relative lack of rainfall. We drove through Colusa County on our way up to Cottonwood last week and those hills are already brown.

For all of you with allergies, I’m sorry it’s grass cutting season. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy the smell of the freshly cut grass as much I do.