Homemade Ditch Mower

I have about 1000 people showing up to my farm this weekend for our annual Rock the Flock benefit concert and wanted the farm to look nice. I bushogged what I could, but because of the steep sides of my ditches, I could not bushog there, but lacked a sickle bar mower that obviously could do the job very easily.Not wanting to do it by hand with a weedwacker, I had to come up with a way to mow it mechanically with what I had kicking around.

So today I took a 2x4 and bolted it to my tractor bucket, then on the end of that I bolted a industrial fan with the wire shroud cut off. I wired up the fan to a plug, and then ran it to a portable generator sitting in the bucket of the tractor. An hour later I was mowing grass three feet off into the ditch.

Interestingly...it actually worked! It did pretty good mowing off pig weed, timothy grass and golden rod, but stinging nettles gave it fits I admit. Now that it has proven itself, I might make a few improvements. By toting my generator behind the tractor, adding a 3 HO electric motor, and getting a stump jumper and swinging knives, it should really be able to mollyhock some grass!

Nice use of resources

Travis,  I'm thinking you probably provided many of the ideas used in "Handyman Corner" on the Red Green Show  :-)    >>>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPgWQCfiVb8

It may not be the safest way to mow the grass, but I must say that you did a good work!

Travis Johnson wrote:I have about 1000 people showing up to my farm this weekend for our annual Rock the Flock benefit concert and wanted the farm to look nice. I bushogged what I could, but because of the steep sides of my ditches, I could not bushog there, but lacked a sickle bar mower that obviously could do the job very easily.Not wanting to do it by hand with a weedwacker, I had to come up with a way to mow it mechanically with what I had kicking around.

So today I took a 2x4 and bolted it to my tractor bucket, then on the end of that I bolted a industrial fan with the wire shroud cut off. I wired up the fan to a plug, and then ran it to a portable generator sitting in the bucket of the tractor. An hour later I was mowing grass three feet off into the ditch.

Interestingly...it actually worked! It did pretty good mowing off pig weed, timothy grass and golden rod, but stinging nettles gave it fits I admit. Now that it has proven itself, I might make a few improvements. By toting my generator behind the tractor, adding a 3 HO electric motor, and getting a stump jumper and swinging knives, it should really be able to mollyhock some grass!

Hedge trimmers work great for cutting grass. Mount one on the front of a wheel barrow. You probably already saw this on the forum.