Electric lawncare equipment looks and functions much like gas-powered counterparts. Photo courtesy of Rooted Gardens.

With summer comes the near constant drone of lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, and other lawn equipment. This summer Sustainable Woodstock partnered with Rooted Gardens, the Upper Valley’s first electric-powered landscaping service, to demonstrate alternatives to gas-powered lawn equipment. Our partnership brought an all-electric lawn care contractor to Woodstock for the first time, mowing the Ottauquechee Health Center, Faulkner Park and four private residences every Wednesday. It has been a very successful season, and next year we are looking to expand this partnership to more businesses and residences in Woodstock.

How does Rooted Gardens mow without using gas or diesel? They use a combination of push mowers, riding mowers and smaller equipment such as weed whackers, just like any other landscaper. The only difference is that this equipment runs on electricity in the form of batteries. Rather than fill up the gas tank, Matt, the owner, and his crew replace and recharge batteries to mow all day. The Electric Lawn is one of a list of contractors across the state who are using all electric equipment, and is the first in the Upper Valley. Visit https://www.mowelectric.org/find-a-contractor to see other electric contractors in Vermont.

Electric lawn equipment has advanced quickly– companies are now making commercial grade riding lawn mowers that for 8 hours of run time. Little to no maintenance is required, as there are far fewer moving parts in electric machines compared to gas-powered machines. The low maintenance costs combined with a very low cost to run electric machines (it costs less than $2 to charge a commercial mower that will run for 8 hours) means that the machines cost much less to run.

There are many other benefits to electric equipment. Electric lawn equipment is quieter than gas-powered machinery, which produces constant noise, and which the CDC reports can create long-term health effects including hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and even cardiovascular issues. Noise is considered hazardous when it is 85 dBA or above– If you must raise your voice when talking to someone about 3 feet away, the noise level is probably at least 85 dBA. Consider how often you must raise your voice above the noise of gas-powered lawn equipment, either when you use it yourself or when you’re nearby. Electric lawnmowers are about 30 dB quieter than gas-powered models.

Electric equipment emits no harmful pollutants or smog-forming air pollution. Most gas-powered lawn equipment uses 2-stroke engine fuel, which is a gas-oil mixture that is especially toxic compared to automobile emissions. These emissions include hydrocarbons, nitrous oxides (components of smog), carbon dioxide, and VOCs (volatile organic compounds). These pollutants and fine particulates linked to cancer, asthma, heart and lung disease, and create smog-forming air pollution. This was the primary motivator for the Ottauquechee Health Center to use Rooted Gardens to mow this summer; in Executive Director Hali Robinson’s words, “we decided to go the electric lawnmowing route so we could encompass the full spectrum of health – which includes environmental health!”

Are you interested in getting involved in the electric revolution? Rooted Gardens has openings for 2024 with neighbor discounts! Contact matt@myrootedgardens.com for more information. Be the leader in your neighborhood.

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Although January 1^st is day one in the year of the Western (Gregorian) calendar, it is not written in the stars. While New Years Day falls near the winter solstice—which is arguably the more natural day to mark a celestial New Year—it has come to be associated with new beginnings and resolutions that serve as individual and collective opportunities for a fresh start.

Each of us is a unique individual, but we are also just one member of a ballooning human population that now numbers more than 8 billion. Even though we perceive each day as a consequential event during which our experiences focus mostly on the immediate and all-encompassing necessities of human survival and the pursuit of a meaningful life, ours is but an infinitesimal moment—a speck in time as reckoned by the stars. Astronomically speaking, 2023 falls somewhere around 13.8 billion years after the birth of the universe.

Recent images transmitted from the Webb Space Telescope are causing astronomers to reimagine our perceptions of the immense space through which Earth travels at 67,000 miles per hour. Spectacular and awe-inspiring infrared images have been beaming back to Earth following the launch on Christmas Day 2021 by this joint venture of the space agencies in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

The Webb telescope was engineered to reveal regions of space that present a picture of what the universe was like just one billion years ago when stars and galaxies were first beginning to form. Indeed, one galaxy has been reported that corresponds to a time when the universe was a mere infant at 250 million years old. While there are a multitude of beliefs about how the universe formed, as well as the place and time to which humankind traces its roots, we are all children of the cosmic dust that swirls overhead and roils the dynamic geosphere beneath our feet.

How do we reconcile our human perception of the urgency and importance of each day, year and lifetime when weighed in relation to the boundless distances and intervals of space and time that our technology now enables us to perceive and measure? What does it mean to start a “new year” while living in a universe that is pushing 14 billion years old? What is the measure of one life in a world of billions?

Human experience lies somewhere between an awareness that the way we live our individual lives has a profound impact on our home planet, and the humbling perception of being a mere wisp of cosmic dust adrift in a vast sea of time. From the urgency of such issues as fighting climate change and alleviating hunger in the relative short term, to reimagining our perception of reality through the expansive views of art and science, we exist suspended along a continuum that stretches between the present experience of each moment, and the realm of the eternal.

How do we navigate our individual path through each day, meeting needs and desires while reconciling our place in the larger world? In what way is our thinking and decision-making influenced by the ever increasing awareness of our place in the wondrous fastness of the cosmos? What will our New Year’s resolutions be as we enter calendar year 2023, and cosmic year 13.8 billion?

This spectacular image, dubbed “Cosmic Cliffs,” was among the first transmitted to Earth by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. It shows individual stars amidst a stellar nursery in the Carina Nebula where nascent stars are emerging. NASA Photo.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Explore some of the fantastical images first recorded by the Webb Space Telescope, which can be viewed at this link: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

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