Artificial drainage
system Every sod farm has challenges. At Jasperson Sod Farm, the peat soils require an artificial drainage system to remove excess water when rainfall fills the drainage ditches surrounding the fields and water levels build up in the soil. Randy says, “We’ve installed subsurface drainage tanks to hold the excess water that we initially pump from the ditches and store until we can later pump the excess water from them. Tese are permanent, inground, large capacity tanks, and every field has one or two of them. We use high volume pumps that move 1,000 gallons per minute. We have from 20 to 80 acres on a pump and have 20 to 22 pumping stations strategically located around the fields, along with three base power units to support them. When we get heavy rains, the water levels in the ditches can fluctuate by as much as four-feet. We need to pump that out before it flows over the ditch bank. Te pumps are set up on an automatic float system that activates them and then pumps the water down, but we need to monitor that to make sure it is keeping up.
2008 and the
100 Year Flood In 2008, the area received record- breaking rainfall for days. Te ground was saturated and the artificial drainage system could not keep up with the overload. Randy says, “We ended up with a 200-acre lake, with water levels four-foot deep in places and covering the entire surface of those sod fields. We had tractors running to power three pumps each moving 8,000 gallons per minute. Once the water was finally cleared, the ground was so heavily compacted we had to allow it to dry down and then deep till it before any planting could take place. Heavy rains hitting in mid- June the next year further delayed remediation. We grew corn or soybeans in those fields for three
38
years to loosen them up before we were able to again plant them back with bluegrass blends.”
Moving Forward Rather than step back in response to this setback, the Jasperson team moved forward, strategically, of course.
Mark knew by high school that he’d make the sod farm his career. He earned his business degree at the University of Wisconsin – Parkside, graduating in four years. Along with general business classes, he focused on marketing, accounting and finance, to gain a broad overview of all the different aspects of operating a business.
Mark bought a 90-acre farm in 2009, when he was a senior in college, and he’d been renting some land, too. He arranged his schedule throughout college with no Friday classes, driving home on Thursday nights and back to campus on Monday, to have three-day weekends for work. “I was farming with Dad, working back and forth and sharing equipment,” says Mark. “Dad gave up some of the leases on the land that he was running to open up those farms for me.”
Family Connections Dawn Jasperson met Ryan Menken during her college years. She was pursuing a degree in education and he was working toward becoming a physical education teacher. While they were dating, Ryan got a commercial driver’s license (CDL) so he could drive trucks for the sod farm during the summers as well as assist with on-farm work, such as seeding. After they were married, Ryan maintained his CDL and continued working summers on the sod farm.
Dawn initially taught elementary students in the Milwaukee Public Schools before accepting a position teaching technology in the media center/computer lab to kindergarteners through eighth graders back home at North Cape School in Franksville.
Ryan taught physical education and earned a Masters degree in Adventure Education from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, adding another dimension to his teaching. Nearly four years ago, after ten years of part-time summer work, Ryan joined the Jasperson Sod Farm team full time.
Jasperson Sod Farm’s welcoming committee also handles accounts receivable—they can growl. TPI Turf News September/October 2017
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