Yesterday, while I was mowing my lawn, I spotted the first few fallen leaves from the several sycamore, oak, and maple, trees surrounding my house.

Because of my time spent as a landscaper as well as an obsessive home-dweller at the end of a cul-de-sac, this sighting tells me that we in the midwest are on the cusp of what some know as the dreaded ‘clean-up season’.

Soon enough now, the two-stroke sound of leaf blowers will begin to permeate the neighborhoods and we’ll all have piles on the curb waiting to be hauled away by the city or towed into a trailer by the landscaping crews.

Historically, I never particularly enjoyed fall clean-ups. Working for my dad’s lawn care company, I was frequently ordered to get the tarp out and use my “young body” to fill it up, drag it to the curb or ravine along a woodline, then do it again.

My dad was right to implement a method for breaking through the massive piles of leaves we’d amassed with backpack blowers, of course, but that didn’t make me enjoy the process any more than if we’d just stood in place all day, using Stihl backpack blowers against an impenetrable wall of leaves.

Over time, this became a routine task that warranted a better solution, and a need for something better arose.

Enter The A.N.T.

After that first time I used an A.N.T. to drag a tarp, I knew I’d never go back. Suddenly, I was moving like a truck and the tarp was my trailer, filled to the brim with wet leaves.

While the first prototype worked, it was rudimentary. Eventually, I found that rope was cutting into my body and hands whenever I dragged something heavy so my dad and I implemented a pad. But it doesn’t stop there. With the next iteration, we realized that the aluminum carabiners we’d been using were warping under heavy loads, so we switched them out for much stronger steel clips!

These improvements served to increase the price that we could make each A.N.T. for, but it’s been worth it to have the best possible version of the product available for sale. I, personally, wouldn’t sell it if I didn’t feel that what we’re offering is the best possible product.

So now that working with tarps isn’t such a ‘drag’, I spend less time dreading the impending cleanups that come with the shortening of days. Instead, I put more thought into the prospect of enjoying chilly weather, hot drinks, and the beautiful colors that the trees are so proud to display.

I’m definitely biased, but if you want to get more excited about the fun parts of fall and less anxious for the work that comes with it, consider giving The A.N.T. a try and see if it makes a difference for you! - Aaron