Swisher + Swisher: A finish acreage mower to die for
Efficiently, it's something like a batwing brush hog without the cost and cumbersome inconvenience.
However, unlike a huge brush hog, it doesn't cut a scraggly 12-foot swath, depositing an ugly, dense berm of grass outside its discharge chute — a nightmare to get rid of before it kills the grass beneath it.
Instead, it finish-cuts a swath almost as wide as those big brush whackers — an acreage-gobbling nine feet, three inches — and chews the discharge into virtually invisible mulch, which will rot into grass food.
And it will cut your acreage lawn chore at least in half.
This marvelous contraption is the clever tandeming of a 26 hp, 60-inch Swisher Z-Max zero-turn-ratio (ZTR) riding mower pulling a 12.5 hp, 60-inch Swisher T-60 Trailmower offset to one side so that the inside ends of each set of blades overlap slightly at the center, leaving no telltale uncut sprigs of grass. Once both mowers are adjusted to identical cutting heights, the merged area is undetectable.
About six years ago, I decided to clear and regularly mow approximately three of my 10 acres. It was a no-brainer that my only lawn mower, a high-wheel Sarlo push-and-pant, was hopelessly inadequate and that some kind of riding mower was the key to my goal of a big, beautiful lawn.
But did I really want to ride a lawn mower a quarter mile up the usually deeply rutted lane every day to collect my mail at the highway? I didn't think so. And how many hunters have you noticed mounted on mowers as they blaze trails into the deep woods? Nary a one, I reckon. They'd be laughed off the hunting grounds.
Then I discovered the Swisher tag-along — a gas-engine mower with a tongue that can be hitched to an ATV or lawn tractor. What a brilliant contraption, I thought — and a perfect excuse to acquire an ATV, which I needed anyway.
For three seasons I pulled the T-60 behind an Arctic Cat ATV, eventually clearing the three acres I now mow regularly. Initially, this was about a seven-hour job, but eventually took about six hours after I popped enough rocks from the ground so that I didn't have to waste time dodging them.
The T-60 was reliable and functioned like a baby brush hog. I could pull that mower back and forth through thick stands of briar bushes higher than my head and it chewed them up and spit them out with the ease of a big log chipper.
A state-of-the-art epiphany
Finally, like a brilliant flash of lawn enlightenment from on high, I discovered the wonder of ZTR mowers, and bought a 22 hp, 60-inch Swisher. I thought I'd died and gone to landscaping heaven as I spun that thing around in a circle without ever moving from the center and zipped around trees, trimming right up against their trunks.
That mower was so much fun I didn't even bother hooking up the T-60, which went into semi-retirement under a tarp for several years. The Swisher ZTR was as rugged as the T-60 and, of course, much more maneuverable. Also, I wasn't burning gas in an ATV just to pull a lawn mower.
The only problems I had with that ZTR were two burned-out $10 mower deck pulley bearings, which I replaced myself. Then the belt from the engine pulley that drives the hydrostatic units broke, which should have been a simple matter to replace. It wasn't.
That belt was so impossible to reach I ended up taking the mower to an authorized repair shop — a 70-mile roundtrip and only located after many phone calls. It was two weeks before the shop could even get to it.
In the meantime, I came across a virtually new, returned last year's Swisher ZTR at Tractor Supply, the one shown in the photo above — a $4,000 mower for a flat $3,000. I bought it immediately and got on with my mowing, still a six-hour chore.
With its twin overhead-valve engine and 26 hp, I figured the new mower would have no trouble pulling the Trailmower, so I dragged it out and after a good bit of tinkering got it running.
Three hours and considerably less than seven gallons of gas later, the whole place was mowed. I'd entered an entirely new dimension of large-lawn maintenance.
Bigger is better
"Large" is the operative word for what this combo is best suited, reaching its peak efficiency on long, straight runs. The more acres you mow, the more you'll appreciate that wide swath of mown grass behind you. For up to two acres, this rig is a mere luxury, but for much more it's a godsend. It's not that the tandem mowers aren't extremely maneuverable once you get the hang of it, but rather that they're simply impractical and unnecessary for smaller areas.
Actually, were it not for the various shapes of sections of my lawn and some trees and rocks that slow progress slightly, I could mow the whole thing in a little more than two hours.
And how does the initial investment in this baby batwing stack up against a single ZTR?
About the same or even cheaper, since most serious ZTR mowers start at around six grand. In my view, though they cost less, quality of the Swishers is comparable to much more expensive mowers.
Currently, Sears lists a new Swisher ZT2660 on its website for $3,999.95; Northern Tool offers one for $4,199.99, and a T-60 for $1,499.99. Atwoods, a relatively small chain of farm supply stores in the Midwest, is a major Swisher dealer whose prices would be competitive and maybe less. Atwoods doesn't have a website.
The cheapest deal, of course, is to find a model stocked by a local dealer to avoid several hundred dollars shipping cost, likely more than local sales tax, which you wouldn't pay on a mailorder sale unless the seller had a store in your state.
You should be able to put the package together for something less than six grand — about the same cost of a ZTR alone of another brand, and probably less.
You'll just have to Google around and maybe let your fingers do some walking in the yellow pages to locate a Swisher dealer near you.
You'll find the Swisher website HERE.
Personally, if I had to I'd travel to Hell and back to put this incredible cutter combination to work for me.
A word of caution: Of all the repair shops listed on the Swisher website within 50 miles of my zipcode, all but one were either out of business or no longer worked on those mowers. I don't see this particularly as a reflection on the quality of the Swisher mowers, but rather that it isn't one of the big, major brands. Parts can be ordered directly from Swisher and most of the few repairs to be expected, such as belt, blade and pulley bearing replacement, can be done by an owner if he's mechanically handy.
The mowers arrive with well-written owner's manuals that include detailed exploded schematics of the various parts and their locations. Nevertheless, in my opinion a competent repair shop within reasonable driving distance is a major consideration. Actually, my only serious complaint with these mowers is that the bearings I had to replace were sealed with no zerks for grease. And I attribute their failure to the simple fact that they were made in China, a country that produces mostly pure crap and whose quality control sucks. Swisher is pennywise and pound foolish to install that junk on its otherwise sturdy, made-in-America equipment.
And, of course, if you're going to haul either mower around you'll need a trailer wide and long enough to accommodate it.
A tip for the inexperienced: None of the small tubeless tires on lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, etc., will reliably hold air pressure over any extended period of time. Check them frequently, keep them aired to the maximum pressure listed on the sidewall and expect to have to put tubes in them sooner or later. They'll never hold air reliably until you do.
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Crotalus horridus: A rattler you just can't seem to rattle
One of the true joys of living on 10 acres in Eastern Oklahoma surrounded on three sides by huge cattle ranches, a quarter-mile off the blacktop on the fourth, is the variety of wildlife you're apt to encounter — creatures never witnessed by urban dwellers.Songbirds are abundant and black and turkey vultures, along with the occasional hawk, are nearly always circling somewhere overhead. The angry cawing of crows announces their displeasure and harassment of a hawk or owl. It's not unusual for a coyote to wander across the property with all the gall and audacity of a neighbor's dog — never, of course, when you have a gun handy.
Common brown tarantulas, some as large as the palm of a hand considering their leg spreads, are plentiful during mating season and always a delight to pick up and play with. It's possible you'll be nipped by one occasionally, but I've never been.
For one who appreciates snakes there's a modest variety: black snakes, common brown water snakes, speckled kingsnakes, a rare hognose and even rarer cottonmouth, many copperheads and the occasional timber rattler (crotalus horridus), which will only be encountered if you're poking around in some rocks or a swampy area.
You don't often see one, and if I hadn't been clearing a large stand of blackberry bushes grown over the spillway from the pond, I'd never have met the one I almost ground into snakeburger with the big 60-inch Swisher ZTR mower yesterday.
As I pushed into a thicket next to a large rock weir I noticed the snake just lying there not six inches off the left front of the mower deck — not moving, hoping I'd just go on by. It was oblivious to how near it had come to snake heaven eternity.
I wanted that snake to observe and play with for awhile, so I backed out and went to the house for the tongs. When I returned, it had moved on but I was fairly certain I'd run across it again, and hopefully not over it with the mower.
About 20 minutes later I spotted it in some really dense briars on the other side of the weir -- too dense, in fact, for me to extricate it from them when I
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I cleared away the growth with a hoe, reached in with the five-foot Gentle Giant tongs, got a good grip on it and pulled it out. At this point, virtually any other venomous or even harmless snake would have been mad as hell and crawling up the tongs for a strike, but not this one.
True to the little-known nature of these otherwise extremely dangerous reptiles, this four-foot timber rattler had only one thing on its mind: Getting the hell away from me. And when it managed to slip out of the tongs on the way to my catch tub, that was still all it had in mind.
I actually had to chase it down to recapture it.
All pit vipers look deadly mean and most are highly aggressive, but the timber rattler is an amazing exception: It's less aggressive than many harmless snakes and has to be cornered and pestered into coiling, then pestered even more into rattling. It makes every effort to get away from you and even in the tongs was simply trying to make a hasty escape and retreat. A huge timber rattler I caught a couple of years ago, much larger than this one, acted exactly the same. Under such circumstances, an eastern diamondback or most any other rattler would be going ballistic, striking and trying to crawl up the tongs at you.
Obviously, if you step on a timber rattler or any snake or just reach down and grab it with your hand it's almost sure to strike you.
Those are about the only possible ways you could be bitten by the mild-mannered timber rattler in the wild. It's most likely you could walk by within a foot of one and it would do nothing but lie there, hoping its camouflage would prevent detection. However, there's no guarantee of that; like people, snakes have individual personalities and can be unpredictable.
Realistically, while this seemingly peaceful nature might give one the impression he's safer in timber rattler country than that of more aggressive venomous snakes, exactly the opposite is true. This snake's propensity to lie perfectly still without sounding a warning rattle in the hope danger will pass gives the passerby no warning of its presence. If stepped on or brushed with a hand, the snake will almost certainly strike instantly — and just as certainly hit its mark.
Depending on the region, many timber rattlers have a mixture of both hemotoxins and neurotoxins, rendering their venom some of the most potent of any dangerous snake. And their large fangs are excellent delivery systems for ample quantities of it. Their bite can easily prove fatal if the victim doesn't receive antitoxin within an hour or so.
Armed with a cocktail of such potentially lethal poison, they're truly amazing creatures in their reluctance to use it.
Back at the house, I nudged the snake around in the tub and picked it up by the tail, controling its forward body with a snake hook. It seemed to be as docile as the hundreds of harmless snakes I've tamed down in five minutes or less, and I believe I could eventually handle it the same.
But make no mistake about it: This is an extremely dangerous snake that should never be dallied with by the inexperienced. I've handled many venomous snakes, but I'd never pick up one without a hook to maintain control of its business end. Only a fool would do so, since these are not cuddly, owner-friendly pets. I'll leave that to members of the religious cults who idiotically cavort about waving rattlers and copperheads — and are frequently bitten, some fatally.
Timber rattlers gain a rattle each time they shed their skin, which is one to two times a year, averaging 1.4 sheds, according to research. They're born with the button, which many lose along with some rattles over the years, but this one has its button and seven rattles. My snake could be anywhere from 3-1/2 to seven years old.
Whatever its age, this one's a heavyweight like all timber rattlers. Maxing out rarely at six feet, these snakes' bodies transition quickly from the broad, triangular head and slender neck to a powerfully muscled midsection of such girth it almost appears bloated. That tapers some at about two-thirds of the snake's length but even then remains thick to the abrupt end of the pattern area. The final four or five inches between there and the rattles is a dramatically slender, almost coal black section with a velvety texture, giving the snake one of its common names — velvet tail.
The canebrake (crotalus horridus atricaudatus), once thought to be a different rattlesnake, has now been determined by scientists to be simply a geographical subspecies of the
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Since mine has that telltale rusty stripe and was encountered in the wetness of a spillway, it's a canebrake. The much larger snake I caught several years ago was a true timber, since it lacked the stripe and I found it in a higher, rocky area. Eastern Oklahoma must be a kind of transition zone where both snakes exist.
Since rattlesnakes in general don't do very well in captivity, I'll only keep it around a week or two in a 20-gallon aquarium to play with, then put it back where I found it. I've ground up that huge grove of berry bushes, but the native-stone weirs are there and it's the spillway for the pond, so I haven't entirely destroyed its habitat. There'll be plenty of moisture, frogs, voles, mice and young bunnies to live on and crevices in the rocks for hidey holes and hibernation.
It might even slither over to the rock ledges and deep ravines of the 800-acre ranch only a few hundred feet from where I found it, but I doubt it. They don't migrate far from their home dens and territory, but mating season might prompt it to roam.
We have to be mindful and considerate of the welfare of our slithery little friends, as we arbitrarily control the population of predatory bluejays, relatives of crows — a practice which cleanly separates me from the ranks of PETA and other goofy tree-huggers and animal rights loons.
Actually, I'd spent that morning trying to get a decent shot at a bluejay.
Bluejays and crows raid the nests of songbirds; rattlers and other snakes mind their own business and help control the populations of rats and mice. They do occasionally eat the eggs of quail and other birds — and sometimes birds themselves — but that will be forgiven by those of us who are herpetologically inclined.
One must keep those distinctions in mind in his husbandry of the natural world around him, and if I'm biased against jays that's their luck of the draw in my territory.
I doubt I'll make the slightest dent in the bluejay population, but this timber rattler can abide along my spillway as long as it likes.
And we'll likely meet again sometime — hopefully, on the same pleasant terms as this encounter.
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Gutted law revives tank-town traffic traps
It's little wonder why so many people have such little regard for the law when a lawmaker himself guts a statute aimed at protecting the many clearly for no reason other than to gain favor from the few in his own district.That's exactly what Oklahoma State Rep. Paul D. Roan (D-Tishomingo) did when he paved the way for the Town of Moffett's uniformed thugs with guns and badges to return to prowling U. S. Highway 64 and State Highway 64D, where they can now continue running their speed traps to rob unwary motorists on thoroughfares over which they have no logical, geographical nor commonsense jurisdiction — and were previously banned from doing so by the original statute before Roan surreptitiously gutted it.
In a "clean-up" amendment of the statute, Roan struck out the portion specifically including, "federal aid primary highways and the state highway system" — effectively gutting the statute where it pertains directly to the very entities who are most likely to violate it.
There was no reason whatsoever for that deletion other than local cronyism on Roan's part to appease several "Moffetts" in his own district.
The good guys in this dirty little sneak attack on what's fair and right are Oklahoma State Sen. Kenneth Corn (D-Poteau) — the lone senator who voted against the amendment — and Oklahoma State Rep. Glen "Bud" Smithson (D-Sallisaw), who failed to catch it but declared later, "Most definitely we're going to bring it back next session."
Let's hope the good senator and representative do precisely that, since you may rest assured Moffett's "enforcers" are out there this very moment working those highways for all the revenue they can gouge out of unsuspecting motorists merely passing by on thoroughfares with no connection whatsoever to this stinking little grease spot off the beaten path.
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Jerkwater politics: Cartoonish cronyism as usual
The plot's so tacky, cheap and transparent it wouldn't make even a bad "B" western:Three newly elected town councilmen, one barely prevailing by a single vote, exercise their freshly invested powers to reinstate a dog catcher and part-time cop to his job after his suspension for "allegedly" attempting to frame the one-vote losing candidate by planting dope at his home.
The suspension doesn't come as a whim of the previous council, but as the result of an investigation by the town's police department.
Of the five-member council, the new trio stands alone in voting for the reinstatement.
The flimsy plot thickens:
It's "rumored" that prior to the vote the three, a quorum on the council, are witnessed by another town official meeting illegally outside the public purview along with the town's former attorney and — guess who? — the suspended cop/dog catcher that cozy little quorum ultimately returned to the city payroll.
Rumored? How can it be mere rumor of a meeting when one of the newly elected trio openly denies discussing town business at it in response to a reporter's question?
"We didn't discuss nothing about this town," he's quoted as saying, his cloddish grammar confirming that the illegal confab, a violation of the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act, did indeed occur.
What were they all chatting about?
If town business weren't the subject, why logically would a suspended cop/dog catcher be included in a private meeting of three town councilmen, along with the former town attorney, presumably there to offer "unofficial" legal advice, suspiciously just prior to the dog catcher's reinstatement votes?
Were they all planning a fishing trip? Did they bump into each other by happenstance?
Yeah, right...
Will the corrupt Snidely Whiplashes in this shoddy little melodrama leave Lady Justice tied to the railroad tracks and ride off into the sunset happily clutching the spoils of office?
You betcha they will. It's the accepted business of blatant cronyism-as-usual around here — not even well concealed.
And the good townsfolk obviously couldn't care less what low caliber of public official runs their burg.
If they did, they'd be screaming themselves hoarse at the county's district attorney, who himself seems to operate under the strange notion that unless someone files an official complaint the likely possibility that state law was violated is none of his business, even after being told of it by a city official who witnessed the illegal meeting.
Which dumps the D.A.'s chances of ending up as much of a Dudley Do-Right in this sleazy little plot of small-town cronyism and corruption, whose ending turns out to be anything but surprising.
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Comics? Don't need 'em in this mullet wrapper
Absence of a comic section in the Sequoyah County TIMES ceased to concern me long ago once I realized nothing in the funnies could be funnier than the consistent incompetence of this rag's attempts at editing and reporting.An especially amusing example rang the bell on the laugh meter recently with a front-page campaign ad for Lewis Warren's county commission candidacy foisted off in the guise of a news story — above the fold no less.
This "story" was nothing more than a news release among dozens, perhaps hundreds, that daily litter the mail of any newspaper. The majority of this junk goes straight to a wastebasket, but occasionally there's something of interest to the paper's readers.
As it happened, the candidate's announcement was a legitimate keeper, and considering the dearth of real news in this circulation area (or this paper's disinterest in covering it), the story was even worthy of 1A.
Competent editors routinely pass such newsworthy handouts to a reporter, who is expected to develop it into an actual news story, which is vastly different from a PR piece, or in this situation at least call the candidate, chat a minute or two and add some background information, plenty of which should have been available on this one, since the candidate is a former county commissioner.
No effort was made. The reporter or editor simply wrote a bland lead, added quotation marks around the candidate's glowing account of himself, stuck in a few transitions and "he saids" then sent it to the printer, otherwise leaving the content verbatim and reading exactly like a campaign ad.
It even concluded with this rousing elect-me closer from the candidate: "Let's continue the growth and improvements for Sequoyah County, by electing Lewis Warren, a proven leader."
A proven leader?
But an earlier quote had the candidate saying, "...I would also like to offer my apology for any embarrassment my past actions brought to you the voters of Sequoyah County."
Whoa! Looks as if we had something there on which to base a real lead and do a little backgrounding.
Nope. No background, no explanation, not a further word about that in this front-page "story" on a former commissioner seeking to regain his seat while suspiciously toting some mysterious baggage from the past.
Other than that one unexplained teaser to past trouble, offered by the candidate himself, the story contained nothing but positive puffery.
What's the bottom line here?
Well, one could cynically surmise that this newspaper was promoting Warren's candidacy in a manner grossly violating professional standards of journalistic ethics and objectivity. Nope. One would be wrong in concluding such energetic, biased pandering.
The correct assessment is much simpler and obvious to the seasoned subscriber: Routine laziness coupled with flagrant incompetence at journalism or any semblance of it, packaged deceptively in a snappy, modern layout.
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