Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Pub Talk). This thread is read-only.
Today we made a little investment in the community. The Town Little League field was hard as a rock, well beyond what a simple drag would fix. It’s damn near impossible to get people to volunteer to help, much less people who have any idea what they’re doing. Our last work party yielded 2 people who showed up at 0900 and had to leave by 1100 ?. When I was a kid I hated playing on shitty fields and I’ve spent God only knows how many hours working on ball fields to make sure my kids didn’t have to. After a couple kids took bad hops to the face, my buddy and I borrowed a skid steer and a powered landscape rake from a local construction company (his employer) and went to work.
We were unsure how it would do. We’ve worked on lots of fields, but never with this attachment. We made 1 pass back draging toward Left Field, and another toward Right Field.
Once we found our stride, things went pretty smooth. We tilled about an inch deep and ended up with a very nice dirt-sand ratio.
The rake did a great job taking out the high places and with only minimal shoveling of excess dirt into the remaining low spots and 20 minutes worth or hand raking, it was damn near perfect. We ran a toothless drag over it to smooth it down, straightened out the gassline, and it came out as close to perfect as you could ask for.
With 2 people, about 4 hours, and $80,000 worth of equipment, it was fit for play. We finished up about 5:00 and by 8:30 we’d already gotten a call to do 4 High School fields prior to the Sectional Tournaments.
We’ve got some other improvements planned and they’ve given us permission to do whatever we want, so we plan to have a much nicer field in time for next season.
Nice work Travis!
Fantastic !!!
That was more than an investment in community …… that was an investment in the future !!!! Get the kids OUTDOORS & playing sports or just playing !!!!
JOB WELL DONE !!!! Thank you
Heck yeah if I got to use that I’d jump at the chance haha nicely done!!
Anytime you can get kids playing baseball over soccer I’m all for it. Nice job.
Very badass of you guys to do for the kids!
Nordraw wrote:
3 hours ago, Nordraw said:Anytime you can get kids playing baseball over soccer I’m all for it. Nice job.
I really hate Soccer. It’s the one sport I refuse to let the kids play.
Awesome work, Skid steers are a lot of fun, I’ve never used that attachment there but have spent quite a bit of time with a bucket and a snow blade
Why all the hate for soccer?
Is it because of limited scope of soccer as future career in US?
It’s the only sport that comes with “Soccer Mom’s”
rdst_1 wrote:
On 5/9/2017 at 11:27 AM, rdst_1 said:Why all the hate for soccer?
Is it because of limited scope of soccer as future career in US?
No, it’s just that Soccer sucks ?
Honestly, I think it all boils down to what one is accustomed to. We never had a local soccer league when I was growing up and even now there’s only 1 in the county as opposed to other sports where there are multiple teams in every town. Most of the kids I know that play soccer do so because their mommies and daddies are too afraid to let them play football or baseball. Accordingly, soccer teams are mostly populated by the “fragile” kids who’s parents signed them up for soccer as a last ditch effort at keeping them athletic. I realize that’s not the case everywhere, but that seems to be the case here.
To me, soccer looks like a bunch of people running around in circles and watching it ranks somewhere near golf on the excitement scale, but that’s probably because I don’t completely understand it.
Great work
I’m sure the kids love it now
@Conductor562…nice job…I coached youth baseball for years …I built a snack shelter 10×16 for our pop warner football team…and the next year a 12×20 roof with tables under……so I commend your efforts….thank you for giving back ..
……it is very hard to get volunteers ….time is the greatest gift you can give a child
Conductor562 wrote:
On 5/16/2017 at 2:15 AM, Conductor562 said:
No, it’s just that Soccer sucks ?
Honestly, I think it all boils down to what one is accustomed to. We never had a local soccer league when I was growing up and even now there’s only 1 in the county as opposed to other sports where there are multiple teams in every town. Most of the kids I know that play soccer do so because their mommies and daddies are too afraid to let them play football or baseball. Accordingly, soccer teams are mostly populated by the “fragile” kids who’s parents signed them up for soccer as a last ditch effort at keeping them athletic. I realize that’s not the case everywhere, but that seems to be the case here.
To me, soccer looks like a bunch of people running around in circles and watching it ranks somewhere near golf on the excitement scale, but that’s probably because I don’t completely understand it.
It’s the opposite for me soccer was the only sport in gym where I wasn’t picked dead last. I never was that interested in athletics for the most part my mom did T-ball as a kid and I had zero interest in it. Watching baseball on tv is torture like golf to me I just find it so boring but I don’t know much about baseball besides the basics.