What do you mean 8 acres of lawn!?!

After surveying our grounds (all 8 acres – I went around the whole perimeter marking my turf… in my mind! Not like dogs do!) I noticed that the grass was really nicely cut. That made me think back to the first day that we saw the place.

Ken, the seller at the time – now he's the former owner and husband to Marj who wrote the letter, anyway – Ken – was in his truck while we were looking around and at the end of the visit we asked him a few questions. One of the most pressing questions on my mind was "how long does it take to cut the grass!?!"

Ken replied "3 hours and 14 minutes!" with a rather satisfied look on his face.

"What kind of mower do you have!" I exclaimed.

"A John Deer L175 with a 26 horse Briggs and Stratton engine and a 54" cutting deck" he rattled off the stats like he had rehearsed them before bed each night. "What kind of a mower do you have, son" he said with just a touch of pride in his voice.

"I have a reel mower… the kind you push" I said with an Environmentally Friendly head wiggle.

"Good luck with that!" he retorted with a smile.

"I'll just make an offer on your mower" I said with a wink.

That's when his demeanor changed. His face grew pale, he turned his shoulders away from me while maintaining an icy stare. "OK" was all he could muster.

I did make an offer and he accepted it. He's now an ex-farm owner and an ex-John Deer owner. I should send him some sort of sympathy gift. A bouqet of cut flowers? A framed photo of his ex-mower?

How about I just treat his farm as nicely as he did.

Darren.

P.S. I'm experimenting with different tools to do the posting. The first two were the builtin editor for BlogEngine.Net. This one was created with Word 2007.