How I Traded High-Tech Hassles for Four-Legged Lawn Care

Growing up, whenever we’d go visit my grandparents on my mom’s side, there was always this unique lawn mower sitting out behind the house. Now, it wasn’t a modern gas-powered machine, and it certainly wasn’t a riding mower. It was an old-school manual push reel mower.

I know what you’re thinking: “Manual? You mean you put gas in it, pull the cord to crank it, and then push it?”

No, sir. This was the kind with two cast-iron wheels, a set of curved blades stretched between them, and a series of exposed gears. When you pushed the mower, the wheels turned the gears, the gears spun the blades, and—bingo—it chopped the grass. Was it the easiest thing to use? Not by a mile. It took a whole lot more force and effort than you’d ever think, but it did cut, and it gave you a workout that would make a gym trainer sweat. I guess that beats taking a hoe and scraping all the grass off the dirt, but honestly, it was a pretty close race in my book.

Fast forward to my high school days. When I started cutting grass, I had to buy my own mower, and those things were expensive. Back then, I had to lay out at least $120 for a basic gas-powered push mower. I know by today’s standards $120 sounds like pocket change, but it was a heavy hit to the wallet back then. And the mower itself wasn’t the lightest thing in the world, either. Loading that sucker into the bed of a pickup truck would strain your back just a little bit.

But man, it had some real power behind it. You’d yank the pull-cord on that old Briggs & Stratton engine, it would crank right up, and it would do exactly what it was born to do. It could plow through grass as thick as a mattress. It would chew up and spit out rotten old apples that had fallen off the trees. It could handle anything in its path. Sure, it was a lot of back-and-forth, back-and-forth, but the job got done.

Then, somewhere along the line, some bright engineer had the genius idea to add a safety flap to the back of push mowers so you couldn’t pull the thing backward anymore. Suddenly, you were forced to turn around and push forward everywhere you went. Let me tell you, it didn’t take but a few passes down the yard to decide real quick that the flap had to go. You had to unscrew it, unbolt it, or just plain cut it off.

It was the exact same story with those narrow little plastic discharge chutes. If whoever designed those mowers actually cut a lawn for a living, they never would have installed one. You can’t cut a yard of thick, wet grass through a chute the width of a mail slot. You need that side wide open so it can throw the grass clear and keep the deck moving.

Well, as they say, times change. By 2025, I found myself needing to buy another push mower. I had been borrowing one from a buddy, but that machine had a terrible attitude—every time you looked at it sideways, it would say, “Oh, hell no,” and quit running.

So, I decided to go the high-tech route. I was going to be modern. I bought an electric mower.

My logic was bulletproof: I had already bought an electric, battery-powered hedge trimmer, a leaf blower, and a weed eater from Lowe’s. Naturally, I figured I could buy an electric mower from the same ecosystem and just swap the battery packs around.

Nope. That’s not how the universe works.

When you buy an electric lawn mower, the tool companies deliberately design them so they don’t take the same battery pack as your other yard tools. You have to buy a completely different, giant power cell. After looking at the sky-high prices at Lowe’s, I decided to check out Walmart. They had an electric mower with great reviews, so I pulled the trigger. I spent a lot more for it than I felt I should have, but to be fair, the gas mowers lined up next to it were sitting at the exact same high price tag.

I hauled it home, and the first order of business was plugging in the massive battery pack. I waited an hour and a half for the indicator lights to turn green, slapped the battery into the deck, pushed the start button, and—hummmmm—it ran!

At first, I was pretty pleased. It was quiet, light, and cut the grass nice and clean. Of course, it came factory-equipped with the dreaded back flap and the tiny little discharge chute, so I immediately took the back flap off to free up the machine. I made progress for about thirty minutes, and then… dead. Silence.

The battery died after half an hour. I wasn’t even tired yet!

So there I was, pushing a dead mower into the shed, pulling the hot battery out, snapping it back into the charger, and waiting another hour and a half just to get another thirty minutes of cutting time. Grass cutting isn’t supposed to be an all-day event spread out in thirty-minute installments. You need to get in, get it done, and get it over with so you can go sit on the porch and stare judgmentally at the neighbors.

I played this ridiculous game for a couple of days: charge for ninety minutes, mow for thirty, charge for ninety, mow for thirty.

Then came day three.

I popped the battery onto the charging dock, and instead of charging, the little red indicator light just sat there staring at me. Then it started blinking: flash-flash… flash-flash… flash-flash.

What that light was actually telling me with every double-blink was: “Dumb-ass… dumb-ass… dumb-ass.”

I pulled out the owner’s manual, looked up the diagnostic code, and sure enough, the blinking light meant a critical internal fault in the battery. I needed a brand-new one. I hopped online to check the price of a replacement battery, and my jaw hit the floor: $240.

Mind you, I had owned this mower for three days and charged the battery three times. And now I was looking at dropping $240 on a new battery? Lucky for me, the unit was under warranty, so I filled out all the online paperwork and got a replacement claim processed.

While I was on the site, I left a product review for that lawn mower that would have made my dad proud. I explained to the whole internet in vivid detail how a replacement battery costs almost as much as the whole damn machine after three days of light use, that the product was a complete rip-off, and that everyone reading should leave that mower strictly alone.

Don’t go thinking the warranty replacement was a quick process, either. I had to chat with customer service online, explain the whole sad story, prove I wasn’t making it up, and finally get them to confirm that a replacement battery was on its way.

Three months passed. Still no battery.

I called customer service back, hot under the collar. “Well, we see the order in the system,” the representative offered cheerfully. “We just haven’t gotten around to shipping it yet.”

I said, “Listen here, summer is going to be completely over, and I haven’t been able to use the mower I paid good money for! I need my battery!”

Still, nothing happened. Two more months went by while my yard turned into a jungle. Finally, I went back onto their official website and left another blistering, scorched-earth review. Miraculously, within 48 hours, I received a shipping notification with a tracking number.

After this whole circus, I can tell you one thing for sure: I won’t ever be buying another electric lawn mower. Between the astronomical cost of the equipment, the ridiculous price of replacement batteries, and the total lack of customer service, I’m done. For that kind of money, I’ll either hire a kid down the street to cut the yard, or we’ll just let the weeds take over. It’s just not worth the hassle. Not at my age—I’m liable to keel over right there in the yard just trying to whack the grass down!

And then it hit me. Sitting out on the porch, staring out at the knee-high jungle that used to be my lawn, I had a sudden epiphany. I think I’ve finally stumbled onto a solution, and I am considering it real hard.

Forget electric battery packs, lithium chargers, and $240 replacement parts. I’m thinking about buying a little electric fence and a couple of hungry goats. Or, hell, maybe I don’t even need the fence—I could just stake the goats out on a long rope and let ’em go to town. They’d trim the grass, chew up the weeds, clean up the fallen apples, and clear out the brush without complaining once about a charging light. Best of all, the yard gets cut completely on autopilot, and I don’t have to break a single sweat or lift a finger.