Bringing YOU the Future of Lawn Care from the
Past !
So what is all this
far out buzz about Retro Mow?
The focus of Retro Mow is to make
petroleum-free lawn care available using technology from the past including electric, human power and biofuels.
In 1970, General Electric introduced a revolutionary riding lawn tractor called the Elec-Trak.
The
E T is a full-size lawn tractor with mower that runs on golf cart batteries. A fully charged
Elec-Trak is able to mow about two acres of lawn on a single charge. We think its GROOVY
to recharge our E T's from solar panels so they are completely
free of fossil fuels. Over the
the past
four years we have acquired and restored a number of these cosmic machines and
came up with the idea of sharing the use of these fantastic mowers cooperative style.
The bad news is production and
support of these super duper machines ceased nearly 30
years ago.. The good news is that they still work, and brand spanking new incarnations of this
trusty tractor are just on the horizon. Sort of like a
flashback !!
In addition, we like the peace and quiet of human powered tools
like reel mowers, push brooms and rakes instead of noisy blowers and the like.
So
how do we move the equipment and people from place to place without using petroleum ? Good question... Answer:
BioDiesel.
At its inception, Dr. Rudolph Diesel
chose to operate his new compression ignition engine on peanut oil instead of petroleum. The Diesel engine as it has
come to be known still runs fine on non-petroleum oils. BioDiesel is just cooking-type oil that has had the glycerin
content removed. This makes it usable in a compression ignition engine without modification. We use a number of
Diesel cars from the 60's,70's and early 80's with small trailers behind for now. Have even added a BioDiesel
minibus for moving people and machines safe and dry. Kind of like having our old VW microbus back again, but with organic
fuel, man...
