so what do you do all year?

When I tell people that I own a summer camp the first question I get, without exception, is "So what do you do all year?". I love running my camp and could go on for hours about everything I do so I decided to occasionally post about the various aspects of the job of camp owner/director.

Today's category is: Landscaping, subcategory: Storm Debris.

Fall is a slow time for camp. Parents are not really looking for next summer yet, we do not start recruiting staff until the winter and it is too early to be dealing with insurance and other paperwork but the one constant this time of year is landscaping. As the trees shed their leaves for winter we have to rake and pick them all up to keep the place looking good. Occasionally mother nature throws us an extra challenge in the form of a bigger than average storm. That happened last weekend when we got pummeled with 60+ MPH gusts of wind for two days. 

When the storm had cleared one of our large pine trees had shed a lot of branches. It ended up filling my truck three times over. No complaints, though, as I thoroughly enjoy this kind of work! The area around the tree went from total debris disaster to clean and neat in just an hour or so. Landscaping is always instant gratification!

Our small property is super easy to maintain. Before I started Water Monkey I ran a large camp on over 100 acres. After one ice storm I filled the big camp dump truck over 20 times with broken tree limbs and other debris!

I miss that old dump truck! 

That is it for this installment. Check back for more insight into how a camp director stays busy all year long.