A couple of my family members have been tasked with maintaining about 10 acres of grassy property that they inherited, and currently they just have a newer ~46" wide riding mower and a 30+ year old Honda ~30" riding mower. With two people, it is an all-day job. I am trying to brainstorm a solution to help expedite the process without breaking the bank. I started looking for a tow-behind option that would provide a much wider cutting swath without costing arm and a leg, but I was fairly surprised at how expensive many of the options are. Even the reel-style non-motorized options are $3,000 and up.

Has anyone here ever used such a beast? If so, I'm curious about what brand/style and how well it worked. If I can't find something relatively affordable, I've even entertained the idea of trying to redneck-engineer my own version using some sort of tow bar rigged to an array of standard push mowers. Even if we purchased five 21" push mowers, and staggered them in a slightly-overlapping pattern, we could achieve a cutting swath of nearly 8 feet for less than $1,000 (placing no value on my time to build it). Although, I'm sure there are all sorts of engineering challenges I haven't considered yet.