Mowing With A Mission

A couple of women have been turning heads while clipping lawns in Southampton Village.

Hilary Woodward and Sally Van Allen, lifelong friends and self-described “women of a certain age,” recently launched a green business called Reel Quiet Mowing—a service that uses human-propelled mowers as a way to, ahem, push back against noisy and polluting gas-powered machinery.

Reel Quiet’s very first client—as of their fourth week, there were seven—is the homestead of Thomas Halsey, a forebear of Ms. Van Allen whose former residence is run today by the Southampton Historical Museum.

“This is our first summer, and this is a new concept,” Ms. Woodward said, explaining the advantages to the health of lawns as well as people and the planet in using hand-push reel mowers. The “state-of-the-art” machines run “like a scissor right across the top of the blades” of grass, sort of like corkscrewed hair shears, without tearing; and fallen clippings provide nitrogen, then dry out and provide carbon, to the grass. “It’s really healthy for a lawn,” she said.

The rest of the job is done with rake, broom, elbow grease, Ms. Woodward’s almost-30-year-old daughter, Emma, in the summer, and a Ford Escape SUV, into which the three women pile their equipment and themselves. When the job calls for a leaf-blower or an edger, Reel Quiet uses quiet ones powered by lithium batteries.

A former schoolteacher and choir director, Ms. Woodward is an organic gardener who co-manages Full Circle Farm and also is a certified yoga instructor. After spending childhood summers in Southampton, Ms. Van Allen, who’s also a gardener, retired from the Gallup Poll to her family home here, hoping to find “meaningful work in an outdoor environment.”

The two women’s great-great-great-great-grand-ancestors had known each other, and the girls grew up with much running back and forth between their families’ homes on North Main Street.

Ms. Woodward came up with the idea for the business last summer after her 2-year-old grandniece, May, complained about noise on a neighbor’s property, and then Ms. Woodward felt the same way shortly afterward while riding a bike on a street where several lawns were being mowed at once. “That afternoon Hilary, pushing her own reel mower at home, was distracted by the mowing crew next door,” says the company’s website, reelquietmowing.com. “She stopped in her tracks, looked at her mower, and an idea was born: a quiet mowing company.”

“We went before the buildings and grounds committee last November, put together a proposal,” explained Ms. Woodward, a lifelong Southampton resident and a Herrick, another family with very deep roots here, of taking on the historical museum as a client. “They just said, ‘Of course,’ and when they gave us that job, then we said, ‘We’re really going to launch that business!’”

People have been excited and committed so far, both Ms. Van Allen and Ms. Woodward said. Calls have come in from Sag Harbor and East Hampton, but as of last week Reel Quiet’s clients were almost exclusively in Southampton Village. Yards on streets in villages are the best fit for their service, which by its nature can’t tackle spaces of more than, say, 1 acre tops.

It does allow for attention to detail. “We’ll notice that something needs to be deadheaded and do it, rather than just walking by it and saying, that’s somebody else’s job,” Ms. Woodward said. “We’re the kind of people who can’t ignore something.”

And given that their equipment is inexpensive to purchase, transport, and run, they say their prices are comparatively reasonable.

“It’s wonderful to be outside and be participating, and there’s a large community that really cares about our groundwater and sustainable practices, and it’s really fun to be part of that community,” Ms. Van Allen said.

The fact that she’s 62 and Ms. Woodward is 61 has contributed to a little confusion for traditional landscapers who show up with big crews and fleets of noisy, gas-powered artillery. Ms. Van Allen was reel-mowing the roadside portion of her own relatively large expanse one day, went inside to take a break, and returned to discover that the people who’d been working next door had stepped in to relieve her. Another day, the Reel Quiet crew was mowing one new client’s yard when “three guys showed up in the driveway with their weed wackers and stuff” thanks to a miscommunication about who had been hired. “There we were with our little clippers and hand mowers, three ladies,” Ms. Woodward recalled.

People will walk by and say, “That looks like hard work,” said Ms. Woodward, who clocked eight miles on one typical day. “I don’t have to go the gym,” she said. “It’s always very satisfying to check the Fitbit.”

With a relatively light load of clients so far, the weeks have been only about two and a half days, and great fun, but Ms. Van Allen has noticed that the grass had started growing pretty darned fast in recent days.

“Talk to us again in September,” she suggested.