Surely The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) at least would free us of the need to cut the lawn? Surely the Yard Police and Home Owners Association jerks would be the first to fall to the zombie hordes? Not so fast, good preppers. There are good reasons to think about keeping the foliage under control that have nothing to do with suburban fashions. Do you have the tools you’ll need on hand?
Why would a lawn matter in a crisis?
Well, crabgrass vs. bluegrass won’t matter. That’s just a matter of style. Two inch grass or four inch grass; sparse or abundant; these things won’t really matter either. As for those dandelions, you’ll be *glad* you have them. (Click here to find out why.)
However, grass won’t stay at a kindly four inches in most of the country if left untended for long. It’ll keep getting taller and brushier. At that point, it matters.
The Place as a case in point
Nobody cares what the ‘lawn’ at The Place looks like. (The Place is our BOL; click here for more.) It’s a cabin set on a little spot of prairie surrounded by woods. No neighbors that care, and Salty and I like wild plants. Nevertheless, we not only keep some of it mowed, but we also take care to control what species live close to the cabin.
Specifically, we keep mowed about twenty yards around the cabin in all directions. The clearing where the cabin sits (about an acre and a half) we manage for species control. This spring I’ve been cutting and stump-killing all the hardwood trees trying to invade the prairie remnants, and last year we had a spray job done to kill off invasive fescue grasses.
The reasons for managing the ‘lawn’ at The Place will be relevant to much of suburbia if something drastic enough to stop most of the lawnmowers goes down.
Fire breaks
When we dropped the cabin in, tallgrass prairie gave us a ‘lawn’ about three feet tall. Now we keep twenty yards minimum mowed around the cabin in all directions. That took a heck of a lot of work. So why?
Fire. Tall grasses in the summer mean lots of ground tinder from late summer through early spring. Late summer lightning storms start natural fires, and people can start them any time of year (and fail to control them). With no firebreak, any grass fire would eat the cabin. With the firebreak, even the twenty yard one, the metal cabin will probably escape unharmed.
Without just a bit of mowed area around the cabin, those long dry grasses could easily engulf it in flames.
When considering your need for a firebreak, keep in mind prevailing winds and local fire risks. If we were surrounded by pine trees in California I wouldn’t be comfortable with a twenty yard strip of mowed ground, for sure.
Ease of getting around
With the mowed area, we can walk from cabin to tippy-tap for handwashing, wood pile, fire pit, and hummingbird feeder. (Ok, that last one’s not mission critical, but I Like the little blighters, m’kay?) Mowed paths lead to the compost bin (allowing emptying of the composting toilet), the pond (water), and the permaculture plantings (food and care).
The difference between the mowed and unmowed area. Having the fruit trees at the edge of the firebreak makes them easy to care for. Having a metal clad cabin makes it less likely to burn from glowing cinders blowing in the air.
In short, we can get to the most important spots of the BOL without high risk of tripping over skunks, stepping on snakes, walking through stickers or poison ivy, or picking up a load of disease-carrying ticks. If you don’t think that’s a big deal … I humbly suggest you haven’t tried living under similar conditions.
Security
Even today, you’ll see lots of recommendations about what foliage to plant (stickery things) and not plant (bushy vision-blocking things) around windows and doors to discourage criminals. If some lowlife is thinking about home invasion, I want him to feel very exposed approaching any potential entrance.
Most varieties of hard times see a lot more crime. That ups the ante on making your residence look unattractive.
Lawn as hunting ground
We didn’t intend this… but deer like the tender ‘lawn’ grass much more than the tough midseason prairie grass. They also like the ease of movement. The mowed areas both attract wildlife and channel them. I could literally shoot deer reliably from inside the cabin (I’d open a window, okay?) as they walk within thirty yards every night along the mowed strip.
So what do you need to maintain reasonable lawn care?
Well, sorry fertilizer and dethatcher salespeople; I’m not giving you any plug here. We’re looking for the ability to keep excessive growth down, and that’s about it. But the tools should be manual. If gas is hard to get, it’d be harder yet to put some of it in a lawn mower.
First and foremost, tall grass/weed cutters are key. Here’s the style I’ve got now:
Inexpensive and effective. They won’t make a Pretty lawn, but they will keep things manageable.
These are very easy to use and don’t dull much, even when abused by cutting lots of tough old silica-rich prairie grasses and repeatedly slamming into unseen dirt clods. Not that I’d do that to my tools … on purpose.
I would like to get an old style scythe (like the Grim Reaper carries). I remember from my childhood that they’re very efficient once you get the hang of them. Good ones are hard to find though. Good ones have the curved handles and right angled front grip. It’s on my flea market hunt list and in this rural area it’ll probably happen sometime fairly soon. This style isn’t as good as the weed cutter above on slopes and uneven ground though.
How about the classic design unpowered push mowers? I’ve heard from several people who use them that they work well only if you keep on top of it. Let that grass get long once and their efficiency drops into the toilet.
Tree and brush tools
Loppers for keeping brush down are also a good call. Life’s easier if you have a stock of a stump killer. I use Tordon RTU…very sparingly. It doesn’t take much. A pruning saw and good pruning shears are also good calls. You have some of those for taking care of your perennial food producers, right?
Sure, none of this will matter unless it’s a bug-in. However, they aren’t expensive preps and might end up very useful. Quality of life and safety at The Place are both much higher for having them. Although, got to admit, I use a gas-powered mower now that the prairie’s been tamed enough to allow it.
Salty’s Note: I can already hear some readers out there muttering “but if you take care of your lawn, people will know you are home”. That’s true, if your TEOTWAWKI plan is to make your home look abandoned, then letting your lawn go would definitely be part of the disguise. My take on it is that people will remain “in denial” about things until well into a TEOTWAWKI situation, so seeing people out maintaining their lawns will remain a “normal looking” thing.
We admit, we don’t live in suburbia so keep that in mind when reading this article. Out at The Place, we won’t have any neighbors monitoring our lawn, you can’t even see our lawn (cleared area) from the road.
Push mowers. I never used a power mower until I was in my later 20s and married. I used to cut my grandmother’s lawns with push mowers and both had triple lots. Yes, you do have to keep on top of them or grass cutting life really gets tough. I learned how to use a scythe and a hand grass cutter (like on the photo above) as my maternal grandmother’s back lawn did weird things and she had fruit trees planted all over the place. My paternal grandmother’s lawn was a little more like a golf course and easier to mow with a push mower. Plus she was in better physical condition than my maternal grandmother, so she would sometimes cut her own lawn if my brother and I wouldn’t be coming over (we lived about 30 miles away from her). She also had a better quality push mower.
But going over to our paternal grandmother’s had an excellent side benefit. She was a super great cook and made the best spaghetti sauce I’ve ever eaten anywhere, including Italy. From scratch and simmered all day. She wasn’t Italian either, Scottish and English. Our maternal grandmother thought boiled potatoes and some kind of meat was a good meal. She was Irish. Thank God my mom learned to cook from her friend’s moms. But I digress.
Tactically, if you want to take the time to layout a barbed wire defense called “tanglefoot,” then letting the grass grow up to camouflage it is a good idea. However, trimming the grass length is nearly impossible unless you enjoy barbed wire slashes all over your legs and other places if you tripped. I personally would prefer to skip that part. So, installing tanglefoot is something you want to keep further away from your domicile in case of grass fires. You also want to keep your critters away, both four and two legged. Grandkids won’t want to come over to your place anymore after a run-in with tanglefoot.
You left out one reason for keeping the lawn under control and that’s pests. Field rats, mice, ticks, etc. all love the dense brush and those are visitors you don’t want near you if at all possible.
Well, hmmm… that was certainly in the conversation, and it’s a very valid point, pest and vermin control is a huge reason to keep the area around the house clean… thanks for pointing it out, it was indeed an oversight.