Here you see master mower Richard Black performing his annual cutting of our approximately nine acres of fields yesterday. It’s difficult work due to some severe slopes and other terrain irregularities, and can be very challenging when the soil is wet.
Non-agricultural fields here usually are mowed in the fall to assure that the summer habitats of multitudes of birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals are no longer occupied by growing families.
The cutting is necessary to prevent quick-growing raspberry bushes, conifer trees, and other larger plants from reappearing and changing the density of the land. Many of us have created and maintained fallow fields because they are disappearing in the United States, putting stress on many species that breed and live in such habitats.
For you equipment buffs: Richard is riding his Massey Fergusen 2850E workhorse and pulling a Woods single-spindle rotary cutter. That type of cutter (or “mower”) commonly (and incorrectly) is called a “bush hog.”
A “Bush Hog®” is a brand name that applies to only one company’s type of field and brush-cutting machines. (The Bush Hog company advertises that, when it first demonstrated its novel product in 1951, an amazed farmer said: “That thing eats bushes like a hog.”) See also the image in the first Comment space. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 1, 2022.)