What’s New!
We’ve been working on this site for a little over a year and have seen it grow to numbers we couldn’t have imagined. After Kacie’s announcements over the past few posts, I wanted to do something that really showed where she wanted to take this site and decided to do almost a complete rebranding of Sweet-Paleo.
To go along with the rebranding, here are a few things we decided to do:
- Clean up the layout. Wow, after looking at the previous layout and the horrendous amount of clutter, we decided it was time to simplify things again. Hopefully you enjoy the new layout and it’s easier to find the things you are looking for.
- Creating a google+ page. To coincide with our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, RSS, and Email alerts, we thought google+ was a good fit. Plus, you get to see my wife’s pretty face when searching google for some of her posts.
- We LOVE to try new restaurants and Austin is an amazing place to do that. So we created a new section titled “Restaurant Reviews”. Since A TON of people visit Austin, we wanted to provide an ever growing list of reviews and help people filter through the mass amounts of options. These won’t always be Paleo, but we will do our best to tag Paleo friendly options. Also, if we travel places, we may throw a review or two your way for those cities as well.
Reel Mower Review
As part of our initiative to green things up a bit, I decided it was time to get rid of the good ol’ gas mower. I’ve always had a gas mower, ever since I was a little man helping my dad out with the lawn. From regular oil changes, blade sharpening, issues starting, and filling it with gas every time I had to mow, it was just something I never thought twice about. So making the switch to a reel mower seemed a little daunting but also kind of made sense.
I was fortunate to find a Fiskars 6201 18-Inch Staysharp Push Reel Lawn Mower
on Amazon for about $100 but it needed some minor repairs before I could begin using it. I also found a couple on craigslist for about $150 just to give you reference of prices I have seen them for.
Putting the thing together was probably the hardest part of the whole process and it really wasn’t that difficult. I had a hard time adjusting the blade to make the precision cuts that reel mowers are known for. But after a little tinkering (about 15 minutes), it was good to go. It did require a couple of wrenches but I think that is all I used.
The first mow went ok. To be honest, while researching push mowers I was a little intimidated by pushing around something that weighed ~50 lbs around our entire yard. But that was not an issue at all. It was actually about the same as pushing my self propelled gas mower. Our yard is fairly flat with a slight tilt to one side of the house. Going uphill was a little challenging but definitely a great workout for your legs and a little upper body.
The reel mower was extremely quiet. It felt weird to me it was so quiet. I’m used to the crazy loudness of my gas mower so it actually took a little bit for me to settle into the silence. Once I got past that, it was actually really enjoyable and kind of peaceful.
The major downside of the Fiskars Reel Mower was that it could not cut weeds at all. After a long winter here in Austin, our yard was full of weeds. I had to continually push the mower over the weeds approximately 5 or 6 times to cut them. I was also initially worried about using this thing in the summer. Summers in Texas can be a bit rough. But I don’t think this was that much more work than my gas mower. Plus the gas mower requires more work just to get it started.
So for just one more way to green up your lifestyle, I would highly recommend a reel mower with two cautions. 1) You don’t have a yard that is greater than .5 an acre and 2) Your yard isn’t extremely hilly. They have other mowers like the
Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower
Do you have a reel mower or used one in the past? What are your thoughts?