Rake Your Leaves the Easy Way and Save Your Back

Fall. The best season of the year, with its crisp, cool nights and Indian Summer days, highlighted by Nature's paint brush: beautiful, colorful leaves. They inspire the soul and soothe the spirit - until you have to rake them up! Now it's "curse ye, dreadful leaves".

I have three acres, populated by large Maple trees and huge pines. They are literally leaf and pine needle factories, efficiently producing their products and delivering them onto ground level where I, as the consumer, must accept delivery. Then the "fun" begins.

What used to take days, though, now takes only a couple of hours thanks to a fantastic product called the Cyclone Rake. But, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

How do I rake thee? Let me count the ways…

In the beginning, it was with a steel rake that constantly clogged its tines and had to be manually cleared. It took forever, and my shoulders and back ached for days. And, of course, it produced piles of leaves that had to be dealt with.

Then, I traded the old steel rake for the wide plastic type. Lighter and capable of moving more leaves, it still took a long time and produced the same backache and shoulder pain. And piles of leaves.

I got clever and used a very large tarp, a 10 by 20 foot size, and blew the leaves onto it with a blower. Very clever of me. But I had to then drag the tarp to the leaf pile location and it took some effort to do that. Plus, the blower was loud and heavy.

I finally wised up one day when I noticed an ad in a Popular Mechanics magazine. It sounded the clarion call to action for past leaf-raking victims, promising back yard nirvana through the use of their product - the Cyclone Rake. Just the name alone inspired visions of leaf conquest, once and for all. I sent for the brochure immediately.

After getting the brochure, something interesting was contained therein: a picture of a man in a town only 20 miles from me. I looked up his telephone number and called him, politely asking if I could discuss this product. He was very accommodating and couldn't say enough good things about it. His yard was similar in size to mine and that's all I needed to know.

First off, you must have a garden tractor with the mower deck attached. The Cyclone Rake has an adapter that is attached to the ejection port of your mower deck. You must drill two holes in the top of the deck (not hard at all with good drill bits) and then attach the adapter. After that, it's simply a matter of attaching a large, reinforced hose to the mulching unit that is towed behind your tractor. The mulcher shoots the mulched grass, leaves and pine needles (and anything else that's not nailed down) into a collection cart.

When the cart fills up, you simply back it up to where you want to position your mulch and dump the precious cargo. I use it for our large garden and for flowerbeds all over our property. The resultant mulch is a free benefit, recycling a natural organic product and not taking it to a landfill. It's a win-win for you as a property owner.

How good does it work? When I attached it the first time, my accountant/CEO/wife stood by as an interested observer, waiting to pounce on me for another idiotic "must-have" purchase. But this time, I not only fooled her, but also amazed myself with my excellent consumerism!

I proceeded straight ahead, through a sea of large Maple leaves and a thick bed of pine needles. With the mower going and the 6 HP motor pulverizing everything in my path, I looked back after going about 20 feet and noticed a completely cleared path behind the tractor! It looked just like the advertisement. It worked just like the advertisement said it would. It was a near miraculous moment in leaf-clearing history (at least for me and my wife). She was happy, I was happy, and I cleared the entire property in about 3 hours time, compared to days and days in the past.

In my advancing age, I have become very cynical and jaded when I buy anything anymore. If the product works at all, I am very happy. If it works exactly as described, I'm ecstatic! In the case of the Cyclone Rake, made by Woodland Power Products, it exceeded all my expectations.

Woodland has a number of models, ranging from residential to commercial versions. They also have a new feature called the JetPath Vacuum System that I don't have, as my model is now 4 years old. If you have a lot of leaves and/or pine needles to clear, this is the answer to your landscape prayers.

Not only did it save me a lot of time and physical effort, it also provided rich garden mulch as a bonus while I happily drove around my yard with a beer in the cup holder. I love fall!