Amongst the most exciting farm projects this year was switching to electric mowers. Last year, I tested out mowing with an EGO zero turn mower to see if it was viable to move away from my gas mowers. Mowing is THE major summer chore to keep the grasses and weeds from outcompeting the trees in lieu of using chemical herbicides. Each week from May until October, I mow around a lot of trees. The larger trees need less mowing for sure, but the freshly planted to 4 year old trees need to be mowed consistently. I might be able to skip a few weeks for the older trees, but I still can’t let it get out of control lest it get too much to mow for the final fall clean up.
I added a new John Deere zero turn mower to the fleet, which uses the same EGO batteries as the other mower as well as many of my other tools. The removable batteries make all the difference for a commercial operation like this — I can just swap out the dead batteries and keep mowing. As it turned out, this JD mower has beaten my expectations and I ultimately didn’t bother using the older gas mowers at all. The cut quality and power have been amazing and I can’t imagine mowing with gas again. Actually, both remaining gas mowers need some significant repair to use again, but since the EV mowing was so great, I never bothered to make the time to fix them. I’ve probably got 100 hours now on the JD, plus enough batteries to keep swapping out. I use solar power on the farm house barn, to charge both these batteries and my EV truck. So, most of my equipment is now solar powered. My JD tractor still uses diesel but I am looking forward to the day that I can switch the tractor out for an electric one. Without a doubt, it is a significant savings in fuel, but also in routine maintenance costs and effort.
