By DALE HOGG
Barton County Media Consultant
During the summer, the Barton County Road and Bridge Department shop is a staging area for the crews to plan before fanning out across the county to mow the nearly 800 miles of ditches along blacktop roadways.
With the above-average rainfall this year, these crews have been extra busy.
“This year has been nuts,” said Chris Schartz, county works director, of the rains that have doused the county. “By the time the guys get done, they must start all over again. Still, we’ve kept up with it pretty well this year.”
There are 389 miles of blacktops in Barton County. That means there are about 780 miles of ditches that line both sides of the roadways.
Barton County operates a fleet of four mowers and when all is good, all four are out on the job. But other departmental projects, like resealing roads, can pull guys off cutting duty, slowing down progress.
“There is a lot that goes into making this work,” Schartz said. So he juggles his employees from site to site as needed.
Keeping busy
“This is our fifth trip around the county,” said Road and Bridge employee Art Ramirez, Tuesday afternoon after a long day cutting. They start in one corner of the county and work their way from one quadrant to another in a loop, each of which takes about a month to complete.
Ramirez said they can cut 20-25 miles per day, 35 on a really good day. Those tractor-pulling 15-foot batwing mowers are whirling away five days a week, rain or shine, no matter the temperature. Operations are suspended if conditions get dangerous.
Work can also depend on the ditches themselves, Ramirez said. Some are steeply sloped, making mowing more challenging because of the angle.
Then, there is the equipment.
“This has been a good year in terms of breakdowns, knock on wood,” Schartz said. After each lap, the tractors and mowers are serviced, and mower blades are replaced.
Currently, the crews are just “mowing the tops,” he said, meaning they just make one pass along the white road edge line. This will change later in the season and the width of the swaths increases to encompass most of the ditches to prepare for fall and winter.
Keeping the grass and weeds short helps prevent deer and other wildlife from being hidden from motorists by the vegetation. It also prevents snow from drifting across the roads and creates a firebreak in case of a grass fire.
The guys in the tractor cabs keep that in mind as they spend long, solitary hours along those roads.
Although this marks part-timer Noah Deines’ third summer with Road and Bridge, this is his first time mowing and not on a road crew. He said he likes this better.
“It’s a little less social, but I know what I’m going to do each day,” he said Tuesday after his day was done. “And I like watching the weather as the storms gather.”
Other irons in the fire
Schartz spends a lot of his time planning projects. Now, it's time to reseal roughly 100 miles of county-maintained blacktop roads. They had hoped to start in August but were delayed by the weather. This takes about three weeks.
“If we are down one person or if one truck or piece of equipment breaks down, we are in a world of hurt,” Schartz said. That’s when the shuffle begins as he pulls crews from other duties, like mowing, and even borrows personnel from other departments to help.
When the Barton County Road and Bridge Department is at full capacity, the roster includes 20 full-time employees, plus the part-timers, mostly students, who work during the summer months.
Mowing lasts from March or April through the fall. The start and end dates hinge greatly on the weather – the drier, the shorter the time frame, and the wetter, the longer.