The grounds that you're looking at today are called the Steve Ferguson Memorial Retriever
Grounds. It was formed by three Virginia retriever clubs. We lease and maintain
approximately 350 acres of the Ferguson Family Farm that was designed and built
specifically for retriever training. And our mission is to promote retriever training and AKC
performance events by having suitable safe grounds readily available for retrievers and their owners.
It's some of the finest retriever training grounds available on the
east coast. All you have to do is come here, be a member, and you can run your dog,
you can train your dog, and you compete with your dog on these grounds.
My name is Mike Griffith. I'm a member of this organization SFMRG for Steve Ferguson
Memorial Retriever Grounds. I happen to be on the board of directors. I'm also the treasurer,
and I've been a board member since we started the organization in 2016.
Joe driver and I are chairman of the grounds committee. She takes care of a lot of the ground
grounds, and my scope and function is dealing with the roads and access and things like that.
These are ideal training grounds from the standpoint
of the game that we play with our AKC friends. We have AKC hunt tests and AKC field trials
that we train our dogs to play in either or both games. Then we have events where
judges come in from out of state and will judge the dogs based on the AKC criteria.
We invest a lot of time and a lot of money in these retrievers besides just being wanting to
protect them because they're like our children. The condition of the grounds is important
because these dogs run fast they get committed
to where they're going, and if we've got ruts and it's it's in deep cover, if they step in that rut
they will either tear up their front legs or tear up their back legs. So ruts are dangerous for the
dogs and you don't want to see a dog injured. It's awful and it's just it's avoidable.
And so we do the best we can to make sure these grounds are as safe as possible.
Our grounds are maintained using member operation
of a 85 horsepower tractor and a 16 foot batwing cutter along with a zero turn mower. The
zero turn that we have it can get stuck in a skinny minute, so it doesn't take much to do that.
We had hired a local contractor with a small tract vehicle. He could pull into a wet area and sweep it
with that bush hog head and get about a 15 foot reach beyond where he could go in. The Ventrac has
already shown us that it can go beyond that and it's a cost comparison that usually will run you
85 bucks an hour and with the amount of wet area that we have to cut, I've paid fairly large bills.
And we'd rather not do that if we can invest in something that's economical to run and operate.
I love this machine. I love it. I love it. This saves...this is...it's incredible.
It's stable. I mean, it's just...it's stable. I love this machine. I was super comfortable. I was
never in a place where I was like ooh. It wasn't. It's just it's just such a stable machine that
it was super comfortable doing all this.
Some of these areas haven't been cut in two or three years. It's been that long since everything
was dry enough for us to get through there. So it'll be a time saver because the lady
that you met, Jo Driver, and she's probably one of the hardest working women I've ever known.
And what we cut with the Ventrac now she cuts with them with a weed eater. So we're gonna make her
life a lot better. It's going to be a big boom to our operation as far as grounds maintenance goes.
We're getting it to a place like we've never been able to get this dried out over here. And I think
if we get that cut down, you know, we might not be able to get it cut down today but, you know, now I
can get over there and I can I can do that whole edge. You know, no matter where we're running at.
We used to not be able to see the dogs here. We're definitely going to be able to see the dogs.
Those guys were panicking.
This is awesome. I love this machine. So it could have gone further. Could have gone further.
This piece of equipment fits beyond what we can cut first with the bush hog, then with
the zero turn, and we've already figured out it's going to be a great enhancement to our operation.