Facing my fears of the ride-on mower (you can do anything)

I was scared of the ride-on mower. I know this is an unreasonable fear. 

You must understand: I am a mostly indoors girl and my brother once killed a chicken with the ride-on mower. Look, the chicken was sick and lying down in the long grass (possibly already dead) but the lethal whirring of the blades and smell of deadly petrol fumes became a warning sign of death to me.

Lach and I have spent all of January deep cleaning and setting up a recording studio in my grandmother’s hundred year old farm house. 

It’s all part of the process of creating our new ‘old time Australiana’ album. Every cleaning task brings us closer to understanding the house and the land that we’re writing songs about. 

Moving from the inner city to the bush has been the right change for us. I’ve been loving the dynamic sunsets that stretch right across the sky, my eyes are adjusting to wide landscapes and we’re feeling motivated to fill the old rooms with music. 

The old childhood fears of the farm are still lurking through: The peppercorn tree buzzes like a horror film with the abundance of bees. Lach’s Mum was helping us trim back a bougainvillea and got stung by a wasp twice, her cheeks immediately swelling up. The blazing sun made me want to hide inside and wash the dishes instead of tackling nature. 

But I was put to shame by Lach’s grandma who, at age 77, was outside in forty degree heat wielding sectors. She cackled as I squirmed when the gnats swarmed into the living room followed by a giant centipede crawling over the curtains, “I can’t believe she’s the one who grew up on a farm!”

I reminded her I was the indoor girl. But we agreed, this move has made me face up to these things that used to scare me about the farm. 

So the time came for me to learn how to use the ride-on mower. Dad drove it around to the house and showed me the levers and the ignition key. 

“Don’t touch the blades here, I already almost cut my fingers off with them last week.”

(Just the thing to say to a fiddle player who had recently seen The Banshees of Inisherin.) 

I drove the mower so slowly to begin with but soon was making satisfying tracks through the grass. Faster - circling trees, taming weeds, trimming grass and kicking up dust. Getting used to the feel of the machine and the topography of the land. 

No poultry was hurt, no fingers were cut. 

So, if I can tackle the ride-on mower, you can certainly do something you’re scared of. It might be outside or inside. Something new to you or something that you’ve been putting off. 

Let's break outside of our comfort zones in 2023! 

Footage of me facing my fears

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