At least once this summer you probably wished you had access to a boom mower. Maybe you needed to mow the roadside where it’s steeper than you like to go with your tractor. Or maybe you wished you could reach over that ditch bank and knock out grass and weeds without putting your equipment and yourself in jeopardy by driving on a sloping ditch bank.

Ferri has a solution for those moments. It’s the TM46 Farm boom mower, designed for use with tractors ranging from 50 to 70 hp. That’s a size of tractor available on most farms.

This boom mower isn’t new. It’s been around for a while, although this company has tweaked its design when it sees a better way to do something. But a piece of equipment doesn’t have to be a brand-new design to be useful if it allows you to do something you couldn’t do before. In this case, the issue may be safety. The TM46 allows you to mow places where you don’t feel comfortable driving a tractor and rear-mounted or trailing rotary cutter. Almost every farm has one or more of those places.

The Ferri boom mower was used to mow weeds and spruce up the grounds at the 2018 Farm Progress Show near Boone, Iowa. It was especially useful there since a power line with sloping banks on either side divides the exhibit field.

The flail head that does the mowing is free to float so it can follow the contour of the ground. The heart of the machine features a spiral rotor with overlap, with two spiral rows of knives. The flail head linkage is drop-forged, and the machine comes with an oil cooler and thermostat. You can opt for a cutterbar instead of a flail head.

Ferri is an Italian company. The mower is distributed in the U.S. by John Day Co., with locations in Omaha, Neb.; Milan, Ill.; and Redwood Falls, Minn. Call 800-767-2273 or visit johnday.com.