My Mowers Over the Years

 When my wife and I first arrived in Marion, Kentucky, I decided not to mow our yard and create a Personal Habitat for the creatures in our yard. I found out very quickly that mosquitos in Kentucky can get very big and draw a lot of blood from your body.

We decided to go to Sears in Paducah and buy a Lawn mower.

Craftsman Magnesium Push Mower

 I started mowing and we were rid of the mosquitos. When we moved out in the country we decided to get a riding mower because the area we had was to thick and too large for a push mower. So we bought a mower like the one picture below from the John Deere Dealer here in Marion.

John Deere 68 Riding Mower

When we moved back to Marion are small riding mower could not handle the wet grass and wet areas in our yard. So we went to Paducah, Kentucky to the James Sanders Nursery and bought a bigger and stronger riding mower a John Deere 111 pictured below.

It was a mule and handled the wet swampy areas with ease. I bought a rubber maid cart, a rototiller and a grass catcher and my garden was being helped, but it was not the garden I had on Belleview in Marion. I added everything to the clay and it help but it may never be fertile. The mowing clutch on the 111 decided not to work sometimes and it became a nuisance, so I decided to get another mower. My next mower  was a John Deere LX 176 Pictured below.

It was just as nice as the 111 but not as sturdy, it was not the mule, but it was just nice and it mowed well. Somewhere along the line I cracked the hood when I ran into some bushes, I worked the mower very hard and the hood finally fell off and staid off.  I glued the hood and duck taped the hood but the vibrations just made it fall off. Something happened and I decided to get a bigger mower. The X300 was the machine I bought and it was a mule like the 111. the X300 is pictured below.

It was a very good machine until this year. I worked it very hard and it finically dropped a push rod and it was never the same after that. It would run for an hour then quit. I was always 50 feet to the shed and had to push it back to the shed. It wore me out so I begged Laurel to get me a new mower. So I have this now, a zero turn hot rod , a John-Deere-Z320R-Z-Trak, pictured below.

It mows well and fast.