It’s lawn-mowing season, with weekends and evenings marked by the drone of gas-powered mowers — our own after-work chores, or just the neighbors, interrupting our peaceful cookouts.

Lawn mowers are more than just noisy. They are smelly and, with gas above $4 a gallon, are increasingly expensive to operate. They are also nasty little polluters, emitting a variety of hydrocarbons, ozone-causing chemicals, carbon monoxide and the smoke particles that cause smog.

I spent years using gas mowers, working on lawn crews through college, and running through a long string of new and used mowers since then. After a few hours behind a mower, your ears are buzzing, your hands are shaky, your nerves are jangled. It’s hard to think when you’re mowing. You can’t hear the kids, or see if you’re about to hit a toad.

Maybe it’s just me. I don’t like machines; I don’t like noise. I don’t like the smell of gasoline. I don’t like the idea of spewing pollutants to create an open yard.

For my birthday, I got a new lawn mower. It’s an old hand-push reel mower, and it’s actually the third one we have. (Our goal is to have four, one for each member of the family, so that mowing can become a team event, kind of like Wiffle ball.)

We pick up vintage reel mowers whenever we see them. They are pretty much indestructible, and we’ve never paid more than $20 for one. Because the design hasn’t changed much since they first came out in the mid-1800s — a cutting reel and roller in a simple frame, a post and handles — it’s hard to tell how old the three we have are. One, with a 14-inch reel and a wooden post and handles, looks to be from before 1900. The other two, with steel posts and handles, predate World War 2. But that’s as close as we can guess.

My new birthday mower is an Eclipse, the only one whose name we can make out. It has some significant improvements on the earliest models — ball bearings and slots in the wheels for oil, an adjustable frame, a 16-inch reel. It’s easy to push and mows beautifully. And it’s quiet. Not silent — there’s the thwat-thwat-thwat of the turning blade — but quiet enough that my aged dog will sleep in the path I’m mowing until I shake her awake and move her. It’s easy and safe enough for my 7-year-old to use, it’s free to operate, and it emits no toxins.

We’ve been using these little vintage mowers for years. And hand-push mowers are gaining in popularity now, with more people thinking green about their green spaces, and more people worrying about the cost of gasoline. Hardware stores and big-box stores are selling new models of reel mowers, in the $150 to $300 range. Old and new models are also widely available on ebay, starting around $50. But scour garage sales and the back rooms of junk stores first — you should be able to find them cheap. The old ones are made of good metal, and the blades hold an edge. They can also be sharpened if they are dull, especially if you have a husband like mine, who generally has two sharpening stones and a file in his back pocket. If not, hardware stores will sharpen blades.

A friend in Saratoga Springs uses a push mower for his small lawn. He special-ordered it from Sears, for less than $100. He said he likes the simplicity, the quiet, and the exercise. And he notes that the yards in his neighborhood are all small enough that firing up a gas mower seems sort of silly. (I live in the sticks, with a yard big enough to graze oxen in. But since we don’t mind cutting grass piecemeal, a section at a time, we find the reel mowers do the trick for us too.)

If you’re looking for a new reel mower, you can check HERE, HERE and HERE. Check out your local hardware store too and, of course, any yard or barn sale you pass.

For more information on pollution caused by gas lawn mowers, click here.

About the author: Margaret Hartley is Sunday and projects editor at the Gazette.

How do you mow your lawn? Have any ideas for yards that don’t need mowing? Have a good mowing story to share? Comment below, or send your thoughts to greenpoint@dailygazette.net.