As someone who practices ALL the trades, having different options for each occasion is pretty darn cool. Whether it's so I can literally see in my shop, or to catch some rays out on the farm, PAIR has got me covered with a single pair of glasses. Seriously, these things are rad. Use code ANNEOFALLTRADES15 to get 15% off your first Pair! Cheers! @paireyewear #PairPartner

#ad People who know me know my dyslexia and reactiveness in stressful situations (especially with machinery) has caused me a few… issues… in the past. After that little incident, my only real option was to go behind the cows with a weed eater to try to keep the weeds on the hillsides from going to seed, and trying to weedeat 7 acres of steep hills every month on my own obviously wasn’t sustainable. So when @Cub Cadet announced their new steering wheel equipped Zero Turn mowers, specifically designed to better handle rough terrain and hills up to a 20-degree slope, I knew I had to get one. Cub Cadet is the ONLY maker of the steering wheel zero-turn, with innovative commercial-grade Synchro-Steer™ technology. Driving it, I feel MUCH safer than the lap-bar mowers I’ve used in the past, and unlike lap-bar mowers, it can also be maneuvered with one hand, so I can even take a few swigs of the ice cold beverage chilling in the cupholder as I mow. It should be mentioned I don’t mow my pastures like a lawn, I’m often in tall grass in areas a tractor and bush hog couldn’t safely access. But the 60” deck, commercial grade build quality, and ample power the ZTXS offers is exactly what I needed. Plus, 5 year old Anne grins EAR TO EAR every time I fire it up. Stay safe out there this weekend, and don’t forget to have a little fun along the way. Oh, and about that broken fence at the beginning of the video...let's just say, please make sure that your vehicles are in Park and not in Reverse when you exit them on a hill. The vehicle traveled very fast down our hill but mercifully turned into a stop halfway down before it took out another fence. :) #cubcadetpartner

Unpopular opinion: cows, goats and sheep are not lawnmowers. Even with 102 animals, most of them are pretty picky eaters and mowing behind livestock after they’ve intensively grazed an area is actually to keep weeds and less yummy plant species from growing up, competing with the good plants for sunlight, going to seed, and spreading further. But I don’t mow the pastures like a lawn, I’m not worried about creating those fancy checked patterns, in fact, quite the opposite. I mow with the deck as I high as it can go and leave as much length as possible while still knocking the weed seed heads off before they mature and spread. I don’t collect the grass clippings, I leave them behind as mulch to shade the ground below from direct sunlight. Mowing too close to the ground puts the topsoil at risk of getting too hot in the afternoon sun, which can burn the grass’ roots, speed the evaporation of water from the topsoil, putting it at greater risk of becoming hydrophobic and blowing away in the wind/getting washed away in heavy rains. I try to cut right before a rain whenever possible, and a few times a season, in the bare and weedy spots, I’ll spread a mix of native grass, clover, vetch and rye seeds just before I mow in hopes they’ll germinate and have a fighting chance at out-competing at least a few of the weeds. A lot of farmers would mow with their brush hog on a tractor but on our steep hills is not only dangerous, but impractical. So when I saw @Cub Cadet New Zero Turn mowers with four wheel control, designed *specifically* for steep hills and rough terrain, I had to get one. The 60” mower deck is comparable to a brush hog and even though I’m usually in pretty tall grass, the ZTXS offers plenty of power and maneuverability to mow at a pretty high speed, which allows me to cover a lot of ground in a hurry. The pastures are already getting noticeably better every time the animals are on them, a huge step towards healing this land with livestock. #ad #cubcadetpartner

SUPERSIZE your garden this year and get superior pest and disease protection with ZERO chemicals! This Compost Tea brewer is super easy to build and makes 40 gallons of high concentrate compost tea in just 48 hours!! Compost tea is just like… well… compost, but in LIQUID form, it instantly provides nutrients to your plants through their foliage and roots. Healthy, well fertilized plants are far less susceptible to damage by insect pests and diseases. Healthy plants grow lush foliage that shades out weeds, reducing time spent weeding and competition for nutrients between plants. Adding liquid compost to your garden not only helps your plants, it also helps develop your garden soil. While this can be applied directly to your plant roots through a watering can, best results come from using a foliar sprayer, at night, just after a rain/watering session. Check out the Compost Tea post on my blog for the full video tutorial on building your own brewer and find compost tea recipes and application tips! Side note: If you’re looking for a little side hustle this gardening season, a friend of mine makes an absolute KILLING brewing and selling her compost tea to other local gardeners. Send this video to your favorite gardener! #gardening #gardentok #gardeningtips #composttea #compost #liquidfertilizer #diygarden

Days like today make me think time travel is possible. Close your eyes for a second. Think about your best day as a kid. On summer break, the warm sun on your face, the smell of fresh cut grass lingering in the air. I’ve been obsessed with motors on wheels since before I could walk. I spent my entire childhood (unsuccessfully) trying to build a go-kart. My favorite days were when my dad would put me on his lap and let me steer through the back roads in Montana. I don’t know about you, but nostalgia is a pretty powerful thing for me. I have spent much of my adult life chasing the feeling of those hot summer days, barefoot, tan and carefree, singularly obsessed on creating one thing and one thing only: fun. Some people think of mowing the lawn as a chore. And for those people, it is. For me? It’s freedom. Not because I have nothing better to do, because, every time I turn the key in my mower, I think about what it was like trying to push my rusty old mower up the hill behind my neighbor’s house, putting everything my tiny frame had into that $5 bill I’d be handed at the end of it. I drop the mower deck and put it in drive and all of a sudden, I’m a carefree kid, the hot sun on my back, the smell of fresh cut grass rising to my nostrils. I think about how I, a kid who grew up in rental housing and had never even had a family dog or cat, announced to my family at 5 years old that someday I’d be a farmer. I remember seeing a riding mower for the first time and imagining what it would be like to get to DRIVE AND MOW AT THE SAME TIME. I can’t believe my hard work, patience, and a few strokes of luck landed me here, on the farm I dreamed about as a kid, and how I *get* to mow this grass. And that’s pretty dang cool. And mowing the grass with this super slick machine? Even cooler. The first time I saw this mower, with it’s steering wheel design, my first thought was actually how cool I would have thought it was as a kid, and, how I probably could have even driven it back then, because the way it works is so intuitive. #ad #CubCadetPartner @Cub Cadet