Living out in the woods has a lot of perks, but no one warned me about how quickly the grass grows and how much love and care it needs to keep trimed. Dad and I were prepared to put in the hours that it would need to take care of the lawn. He even went to the extent of saying “I will do all 1 acre by hand!”. Yeah right, Dad.

Now we had the dilema of finding what we would need to take care of the lawn, we went hunting for infomation to the one place that we trust – Yard Gear. After a small conversaion with Steve Butler to see what we needed, Elma came up with the bright idea of looking into the Automower. This made me give her one of the looks, where one gives when he sees his bride to be walk down the aisle.

After talking some numbers with Steve, we figured that for only a fraction of a price more than a ride-on mower, we could get one. In hope that non mechanical me does not have to deal with oil changes and other “car” related issues.

One fine Friday, Steve came over with our new toy and installed it. He started off by installing the guide wire, one that tells the mower what the limits are of the yard. He also took the time to go around obstacles that would damage the mower. Installed the charge base and let it run.

For the first few days we were mesmerized by its drunken erratic movements where it would keep on going straight until it bumps into the guide wire, turn around a bit and repeat. But during this time we saw it get stuck a few times, due to our long grass so we had to nudge it sometimes to get it unstuck. But after a few days passed, it now navigates the lawn like it owned it for longer than we did.

Had to use the drone to capture some of the action below:

I took the opportunity of Elma selecting automation to tactfully give it the name Spirit, one of the Mars rovers in hope that we can make the next “robot” Curiosity and then Perservence.. Fingers crossed!