Florida Sod Growers Field Day

This year’s event was held at Lake Jem Farms, in Mount Dora, Florida on April 26th & 27th, 2007. Keith Truenow, owner of Lake Jem Farms, was a great host and had his farm in tip top condition for the show. Even though this area is experiencing a drought Keith had produced an excellent field of Empire Zoysia Grass for the field day demonstrations. On Thursday evening, April 26th, delegates enjoyed a casual reception and dinner buffet at the Mission Inn Resort in Howey in the Hills. It was a great opportunity to visit and network with other folks from the turf grass industry. After dinner a fund raising auction and 50-50 draw raised a considerable amount of money to fund turfgrass research. Betsy McGill, Executive Director of the Florida Sod Growers Co-Op, did an outstanding job in organizing the event. Trebro is also proud to support the Florida Association, and this year we were a Platinum Field Day Sponsor. We believe it is important to support regional and state associations; a healthy strong turfgrass industry is in everyone’s interest. On Friday, April 27th, we were back at Lake Jem Farms for a day of equipment demonstrations. Over 300 turfgrass professionals from across Florida, Georgia and as far away as Texas participated in the event. At the Trebro booth you could see our complete range of automatic turf harvesting equipment. First up for the demonstrations was the Trebro M-101 HandStack turf harvester. Attendees watched the M-101 in action for the first time. An excellent pallet of 16” x 24”slabs was produced thanks to the exclusive Trebro floating cutting head design. The M-101 is priced thousands less than competitive machines and yet incorporates the field proven technology used in the rest of our turf harvesting line. Next, everyone got to see the most impressive high capacity automatic turf harvester on the market today, the Trebro AutoStack. Introduced back in 1999, AutoStacks have produced over 10 million pallets of turf, and that number grows everyday. “Rollin’ in the South” - We proved to everyone on this day that yes, you can roll warm season grasses successfully. Using a single operator, a 500 square foot pallet of 24” small rolls of zoysia grass was produced in a little over a minute. Do the math and you will soon realize that an AutoStack can pay for itself in a very short period of time. Also landscapers love installing the 24” 10 square foot rolls; it saves them time and labor as well. The Trebro HarveStack was shown next. It offers all the benefits of the AutoStack in a conventional tractor mounted design. For smaller operations where the capacity of the AutoStack is not necessary the HarveStack is the ideal machine. Again, a neat compact pallet of 24” small rolls was produced demonstrating again how easy, convenient and quickly warm season grasses can be harvested using the small roll method. The Trebro AutoSlab II was demonstrated next showcasing the new hook pick up system. 16” X 24” slabs of turf were picked up by a hydraulically powered hook system that gently transferred them to the pallet. Using an offset stacking pattern, and a few 16” X 48” slabs for tie-ins, a neat stable pallet was produced. We also demonstrated how the AutoSlab II can eject a single slab of turf. Just with the flick of a switch the driver can get rid of unwanted slabs without having to scrap a whole layer. Here again, the AutoSlab II is a highly productive single operator turf harvester that will quickly pay for itself in a short period of time. Everyone at Trebro would like to thank Keith Truenow of Lake Jem Farms, as well as Betsy McGill for putting on such a great show. We look forward to supporting the Florida Sod Growers Co-Operative and participating again in future shows and events.