The reason Retta Jordan was sitting atop a Ferris IS 2000 in the middle of a ten acre field is because she wanted to learn how to operate the lawn mower and her husband, Doug, thought it’d be the safest place to practice. Take your time, he told her. Don’t worry about making straight lines. Do your best. And whatever you do, stay away from everything.
“A machine like that, you have to get on and dive into it,” Doug said. “She picked it up fairly quickly.”
For Doug Jordan, the joy of mowing is a family affair.
It started nearly three decades ago when Doug moved from Maine to Downingtown, Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive west from Philadelphia to marry Retta. He joined a landscape company and for the next 17 years mowed huge tracts of land for municipalities, schools, and athletic venues.
Meanwhile, his wife and daughter, Meagan, had always dreamed of owning a horse farm. That dream was realized when the Jordans bought a 56 acre farm in Downingtown.
Those days, you’d find Doug on one of his Ferris zero turns or walk behind mowers, maintaining the pastures and finishing the lawn around the house.
“My thought was I was going to semi-retire from landscaping and just do this horse farming altogether,” Doug remembers. “But in reality, I needed all the landscaping equipment for the farm anyway and once the farm got up and doing well, I started back landscaping again.”
Hopesprings Landscape and Farming Service was born.
Doug serves high-end residential customers with a fleet of Ferris mowers and Echo and RedMax power equipment. He even has a New Holland tractor with a six foot bush hog for rough cuts.
“Mowing means a lot to me,” Doug said. “It’s like your personal signature, so when you ride past my properties it’s like looking at my name on their lawn. I love that aspect of my business.”
Doug’s signature includes straight lines and exact trimming, strict attention to detail, and no blemishes. He insists on varying the cut pattern of every lawn, whether it’s one-third acre or a five acre property.
“If you’re cutting the same way all the time, you are going to end up tracking that lawn,” Doug said. “It may look good at first, but eventually you’re going to start seeing those wear marks in the lawn…it’s customer satisfaction.”
Doug’s oldest machine is no longer used for Hopesprings Landscape. It now belongs to Retta, so she can mow at the farm.
“It was always like, ‘Doug teach me to run the machine, teach me to do this, teach me to do that.’ One day I was like, ‘Okay, babe, let’s go.’”
And that’s how they ended up out in the middle of the ten acres.
Each mowing season now starts with Retta making sure that her Ferris is gassed up, the oil is checked, the blades are good.
“Then my daughter started saying, ‘Hey Dad, teach me run the machine so I can help Mom out on Saturday sometimes,’” Doug recalls.
Meagan got a machine to use on the farm when Doug bought a brand new IS 3300 for the landscaping business.
Back to the middle of the field Doug went, only this time it was so that Meagan could practice cutting and getting used to the controls.
“I taught her the same way. And in the driveway, I showed her how to turn the blades on and off. So now both my wife and daughter are good at mowing, I can tell you that.”
The Jordans have their own jobs, their own identities outside the farm. But when they come back together at the farm to compete with their horses or to mow their pastures, they take on a family identity that Doug calls a blessing.
“My joy has been infectious, absolutely,” Doug beams. “I can tell you, they’re very proud of me, the business that I’ve had, the reputation that I have now.”
The Jordan family puts a premium on doing a good job.
“We have always said that, especially with my daughter, doing the best you can. What you do is your name; your reputation is your signature in life, so do a good job.
“Retta and Meagan have always been willing to cut grass at the farm and they love doing it. Sometimes it’s all three of us on machines out there and it’s a beautiful sight. We go out and we hit a ten acre field and we’re done in an hour.”
