Manicuring property boundaries

Glad you mow along the highway , we do the same thing. IMO my guess would be you blowing the grass onto the highway.. THAT IS A NO NO.
Yes it blows off the highway in a couple of days but if your riding a motorcycle, or bike and you come around a corner and now wet grass is on the highway , your bike can be down in a heart beat.

You might be accepting more liability then you want. I put a butter knife through a rear window and a windshield within 12” of the drivers head one time.

Since then I have a better respect for it shouldn’t happen, but if it can.....

Other then that unless it’s a protected wetland you shouldn’t have legal or ethical problems for mowing it.

etcallhome said:

Glad you mow along the highway , we do the same thing. IMO my guess would be you blowing the grass onto the highway.. THAT IS A NO NO.
Yes it blows off the highway in a couple of days but if your riding a motorcycle, or bike and you come around a corner and now wet grass is on the highway , your bike can be down in a heart beat.

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That would explain the frown.

Dirty Harry said:

Anyhow, this afternoon while mowing the grass along Grandpa's field, this guy slowed waaay down, rolled down his window, shook his head at me and gave me this disgusted, frowning, disapproving look.

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Ask him if he needs help knocking that stupid ass look off his face.

After posting this I did a quick little web search. Turns out it's "illegal" in my state (sketchy grey area, but still...). Never thought about it in all these years, and being a biker I s'pose I should've. I'll have to remember from now on to mow so that I discharge away from the pavement. Guess you never stop learning. Feel kinda stupid now.

Dirty Harry said:

After posting this I did a quick little web search. Turns out it's "illegal" in my state (sketchy grey area, but still...). Never thought about it in all these years, and being a biker I s'pose I should've. I'll have to remember from now on to mow so that I discharge away from the pavement. Guess you never stop learning. Feel kinda stupid now.

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In this case, keep it in the ditches.

Yes, it was definitely the grass clippings in the road that led to the look. That will make people go full on Karen around here. They are right even if they're overly dramatic about it. It is dangerous for motorcycles and bicycles, and frankly I don't want your grass clippings blowing through the window of my car either as I drive through them.

I'm sure the person driving by has no clue who owns the land or they your working outside of your bounds. I do that too sometimes. Keep the discharge out of the road and blowing in a safe direction, and I think most reasonable people would appreciate it. I know I do when I see other people doing it.

Yep. I mow in front of my place and I have always blown the clippings back toward my wooded property and not the road. Heck, I even blow all the fine gravel, dirt and sand that the county drops every winter. It just looks nice and like the OP stated, it makes it easy to spot the trash and c-butts from the littering crowd.

There is a house near me that the owners mow about every two or three weeks and they are right on the corner of a county road and a state road. The dude blows all the clippings onto the county road that has to stop for the state road. It is a thick green mess of slick grass and horse doo from the Amish buggies. I'm surprised a car or biker have not wiped out on that corner.

etcallhome said:

Glad you mow along the highway , we do the same thing. IMO my guess would be you blowing the grass onto the highway.. THAT IS A NO NO.
Yes it blows off the highway in a couple of days but if your riding a motorcycle, or bike and you come around a corner and now wet grass is on the highway , your bike can be down in a heart beat.

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I do also but always blow the clippings back onto my property when done.

I mow the roadsides, both sides of the County road for one mile. But I always blow the debris into the ditch. My Zero Turn mower is extremely effective at removing any grass from the pavement when backing with the deck on, much more so than when going forward and clearing the pavement.

The grass left on the road is not only a hazard to bikes and motorcycles, but it just looks trashy in my opinion. Like a job not finished. Also, it washes into the storm drains and causes weeds to grow in the dirt at the drain grates as well as in the drains, which can lead to expensive drain system repairs. It also leads to blocking storm drain grates, which leads to flooding, and the problems just keep growing...............

Here's a couple of tips for you and your wife for your trash clean up along the road, which I learned a LONG time ago, after struggling with plastic trash bags for my road side clean up efforts.

1. - Save the 40 pound and 50 pound bird seed or animal feed bags which have the woven plastic construction and use them for road side trash pick up. Some even have a molded handle on top of the bags..........

A. - They don't twist in the wind when you are trying to use them, which is a real pain. Plus, they don't snag on everything with a thorn and Lord knows, the road sides have plenty of things with thorns and branches........

B. - They roll up very nicely and are easy to carry and I carry half a dozen of them when I walk the road sides, cleaning up trash with a flexible tie around them. As I fill one, I just set it along the road against something (tree, sign post, etc) and then come back and pick them up with my tractor in the FEL bucket.

C. - The trash stick won't damage the bag and you can insert the trash stick into the bag and use the bag to pull the items off the nail on the end of the trash stick, to avoid touching trash unless necessary. With a plastic trash bag, you risk tearing or rupturing the bag. Not these animal feed bags, they need to be cut with a razor to open them.

D. - The bags are tough and won't tear, won't snag and won't get cut by anything you put in them. They don't hold quite as much as a plastic trash bag, but they are far easier to use and work with. This is the type of bag on this Bird Seed I use and the specific bags I am talking about, which are used by most animal feed products in our area.




Also, I use a custom made trash stick with a broken snow shovel wooden handle with a framing nail pounded into the business end of the handle, and then sharpened with either a grinder or a Dremel tool removing the nail head and putting a spear point on the nail.

The wood handle is great to help balance yourself when walking in the ditch and the nail is tough enough to be able to jab metal objects like can's, etc, to pick them up. The nail won't bend when jabbing stubborn items or fail to penetrate something you want to pick up. Usually, once jabbed, the item is headed into the feed bag for disposal....................

Thank you to you and your wife, for doing the road side mowing and trash clean up. Every effort helps..............

You need to know your local laws. Some places have laws against mowing the road right of ways. The nut jobs a round here don’t even want lawns mowed the month of May to protect wildlife. Most of us ignore it . But I did I see where they fined a guy for mowing a ditch that was supposed to be wildlife habitat.

I agree with above, probably because clipping were in the road. I mow all my road frontage from road to ditch and from ditch to the woodline.

I typically do blow them in the road when mowing, but I then run the mower down the road to clean them off and here is why... EVERY mower I have ever had the deck sticks out further on the left side (opposite discharge) while seated on the mower, you need that offset to cut close to whatever you are mowing too... I am considerate, if I see a car coming I stop so there is no chance of anything flying out at the car. And I acknowledge other mowers when they do the same for me by slowing down, waving and a nod.

The hole grass in the road deal, I think the motorcycle people are wrong for hating on property owners. They need to lobby the mower industry. If decks were rear discharge, or offset to the discharge side, this would be a non issue. Just my opinion.

On another note, my property corners are in the center of the road, so in my mind the road is on my property and I am nice enough to let the state have it there.

ridesdirt said:

I typically do blow them in the road when mowing, but I then run the mower down the road to clean them off and here is why... EVERY mower I have ever had the deck sticks out further on the left side (opposite discharge) while seated on the mower, you need that offset to cut close to whatever you are mowing too... I am considerate, if I see a car coming I stop so there is no chance of anything flying out at the car. And I acknowledge other mowers when they do the same for me by slowing down, waving and a nod.

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etcallhome said:

I failed to say Yes if I put grass clippings on the road , I'll make maybe 3 passes on the road with the mower running just to blow the clippings back on the property.

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All sound just like what I do.
My ditch line

On my way to work this morning the area of the road in question was completely clean; no grass anywhere in the road itself. Still, I will certainly be more mindful about direction of clippings & discharge from now on.

With regards to roadside cleaning, I always save a few of my water softener salt bags after they're emptied, to re-purpose for trash duty. They've got the molded-in handles up top, and nothing short of a razor sharp edge will pierce 'em. We dump them into our big trash hopper when we get back home. We always wear thick, rubber-coated gloves, but that homemade jabbing stick sounds like just what my aging back ordered!👍

The biggest PITA is when d-bags dump big stuff. Last summer, I had some SOB toss tires, an air conditioner fan & housing and other large, heavy junk into the low lying ditch along my woods. Then I was stuck with the clean up AND paying to take it to the landfill! Wished I'd caught 'em in the act and had my shotgun handy. Would've given him/them a fright they wouldn't have soon forgotten.

Harry, You can either be ethically or legally correct, but not both! I know this varies state by state, but mowing along the roadside, EVEN on your property may be illegal! States usually have a right of way along the side of a highway and if your mowing there, you'll legally trespassing...even though you property deed says it's your property! Add to that, litter is defined as, "Waste products that have been disposed improperly, without consent, at an inappropriate location," so if your "disposing" clippings on a place that's not yours, and an officer with a hair across his butt could legally fine you for littering...with many states having a $300-$500 fine. This would include discharging to the road AND the grass along the right of way.

Ethically, morally, I'd say do it and let the chips fall where ever...clippings too! Bob