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I've been using lawnmowers for 60 years but my all time favourite is the Craftsman LT2000 which I've owned since 2008.

Good choice! Welcome to the forum. :welcome:

Welcome from across the big pond, Wales looks beautiful from pictures I've seen, have ancestry in Conwy.

deck~dragger said:

Welcome from across the big pond, Wales looks beautiful from pictures I've seen, have ancestry in Conwy.

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Wales is beautiful (I may be a little biased being a Welshman!). You should visit your 'homeland'!
I note you have a Husqvarna mower. My brother in law in Australia has one and when I saw it I was surprised to see that it was virtually identical to my Craftsman LT2000. Same layout, same body and same controls. I didn't check the engine, mine is BS 17.5hp, but outwardly it was the same machine albeit painted orange and with Husqvarna labels.
He also had a little Fergie tractor which made me quite envious!

There are still a lot of Fergie's in Wales just go out and pick one...!

Hello and a nice welcome to the forum
Alan

Diwali said:

Wales is beautiful (I may be a little biased being a Welshman!). You should visit your 'homeland'!
I note you have a Husqvarna mower. My brother in law in Australia has one and when I saw it I was surprised to see that it was virtually identical to my Craftsman LT2000. Same layout, same body and same controls. I didn't check the engine, mine is BS 17.5hp, but outwardly it was the same machine albeit painted orange and with Husqvarna labels.
He also had a little Fergie tractor which made me quite envious!

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I had a 2003 Craftsman made by AYP [American Yard Products] Electrolux, yes, so was Husqvarna at the time, good mowers. Now Husqvarna Group is independent and makes there own mowers. Bit of company history on the logo-https://www.husqvarnacp.com/us/about-us/husqvarna-history/

I think you will find Husqvarna was originally a gunsmith and like a lot of others gunsmiths had to find something else to do during the rare occasions when the Europeans were not trying to kill each other.
Like a lot of other gun makers they diversified into fashionable enterprises that could be made with the gun making equipment they owned.
Not much different to the BSA group or Royal Enfield except it was managed by competent people not old school tie idiots.
Husqvarna started to make mowers when they acquired a company that made commercial reel mowers as a side line.
Electrolux bought Husqvarna and several other companies including Jonsored who made chain saws and riding mowers.
In the USA Husqvarna imported European made mowers & chainsaws as well as having AYP , Noma & Murray manufacture Husqvarna branded riding mowers.
because of the effects of the EEC, Electrolux sold off Husqvarna as a separate entity and because of different corperate laws in Europe , Electrolux could not sell Husqvarna off pennyless as happens in the UK, USA & Australia.
Because Europen business know the benefits of vertical intergration Husqvarna started buying up their supply chain ( as did Stihl ) so they bought AYP as Noma had already gone bust & been picked up by Murray
AYP was and still is a contract manufacturer of out door products for other companies similar to what Murrray & Noma were and to a lesser extent MTD is today.
They picked up McCulloch who made chain saws and got other outdoor products made for them some time latter when McCulloch overextended themselves and went broke .
Because some Husqvarnas were made by AYP and some Craftsmans were also made by AYP using the same machines and similar tooling some Craftsmans and some Husqvarnas look very similar.

As for Fergies, they were incrediably popular down here and have a very large following , a single marque collectors club and even a single model , the 20Hp TE, favoured by the soldiers allotment farmers who all went broke because you can not make a living form 10 acres west of the divide down here as much as the Ex-pom parliamentarians decided we could, just like merry old England.

EngineMan said:

There are still a lot of Fergie's in Wales just go out and pick one...!

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LOL! Very true but, much as I like the old Fergies, I opted for something a little less old and more beefy: a Case IH 248 - which I'm very happy with. For the smaller jobs, cutting lawns and towing, the Craftsman LT2000 does sterling work.

deck~dragger said:

I had a 2003 Craftsman made by AYP [American Yard Products] Electrolux, yes, so was Husqvarna at the time, good mowers. Now Husqvarna Group is independent and makes there own mowers. Bit of company history on the logo

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Interesting! Thanks.

Yep,
Close to the big cities a 10 acre plot intensively farmed for veggies made a good living for a big family with a lot of kids ( free labour) until the 80's when supermarkets took over .
But out of town, or over the hill, no chance
A friend just sold his fathers old farm. 1000 acres ( consolidation of 90 ex-service blocks ) which included the entire town of Brooklana with 300, residential blocks, surveyed, laid out but never actually sold because tractors got bigger and you no longer needed 1 man / 5 acre . Ten acres is the limit one man could farm using only walk behind impliments or horses.
Most of our early pollies were either the sons of squatters / former pollies or Pommie rejects.
As late as the 70's they still believed that "rain follows the plow" and the "cure" for our deserts was to farm them, just like merry old England.
If just one of them sat down with a black man who had 50,000 years of orally recorded history of the country they would have found out why only a few Nations bothered to farm their tribal lands other than fire improving pastures.
In the 70's we spent a fortune building a beautiful dam, draining the Upper Hunter valley, where incidentially they had been growing DRY CLIMATE WINE GRAPES for around 80 years so the "beautiful dam has never been more than 1/3 full.