For the past year I have been living in a rental house that has a half acre lot, most of which is covered in a natural weedy lawn. This is a rainy state, and the lawn grows quickly and thick in season, despite not watering or use of chemicals. The only attention the lawn gets is in the form of cutting it back with mowing, trimming, and edging.
I picked up a muscle powered reel mower off of Craigslist cheaply. It is a modern unit, in good shape. (Husqvarna Novocut). There are better ones out there, but this was cheap to try out the idea. I tuned it in just right with feeler gauges and keep it lubricated. I have the height set as high as it will go.
My problem is, most of the mowing season it does a very poor job on the yard. Due to the design of the mower (and almost every reel mower I have examined) stems such as dandelion, plantain, and any grass in seed simply get bent over before getting cut. Due to this, I had to make about 4 passes, twice weekly, on each portion of grass. This was a huge time suck. I realize that an alternate model of reel mower may have an incremental improvement, but it seems the overall paradigm would be the same. A reciprocating sickle bar push mower seems like it would be the answer, but I have yet to find one outside of a youtube demo of an antique.
Begrudgingly, I fired up the conventional gasoline push mower, and get the job done in 1 hour rather than 4. Even with a dull blade, the results were better. I plan to sell it when I move and invest in a quality cordless mower (EGO or whoever is best by then), but for now the conventional, noisy, gas burning one is on-hand.
Trimming the fence edges has been a similar experience. Not owning a string trimmer initially, I stayed committed to muscle power. I used a lawn shear to trim the portions I could not get with the reel mower. However, this ended up taking 3 hours a week. The yard just isnt worth that much of my time. I got a quality cordless string trimmer and am much happier with the results and time expenditure.
Edging along walkways actually works well with hand tools.
How have those of you committed to the ideal of muscle power made it work? I have considered alternate landscapes or livestock-as-lawnmowers once I own a home, but for now the paradigm must be to cut the grass in some method. Have I missed the proper method, and it is possible to maintain a property this size by hand for less than a full day of effort per week?