"There’s a reason you see so many Walker Mowers on trailers around here and why we have three of them," says Paul Isaacson, sexton for the Wendell, Idaho, cemetery. "They live a long life. In fact, we recently sold one of ours that had 8,000 hours on it to a homeowner for $1,500. He figured it would last him forever mowing once a week.

There are several ways and reasons to mow a lawn. At the very least, lawns can be mowed to control weeds or tame turfgrass in outlying areas. At the other end of the spectrum are lawns designed and maintained to look almost like golf greens. In between lie a variety of properties and mowing strategies that can be placed into one of two broadly defined categories: high-production mowing and quality mowing.