Billy Turf: Snow Business

This past week Lawn & Golf & Ventrac sponsored an educational event with the PGMS at Coca-Cola Stadium, home of the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. It was called a "Snow Symposium" The day started with a review of the products available through Ventrac.
Andy Barone, our factory representative, gave the overview of the Ventrac product line, with an emphasis on the snow removal attachments. We then headed in for lunch and then education.
Following lunch, we had a 3 speaker lineup.
Our first speaker was John Tyrell, of Ricci, Tyrrell, Johnson & Grey, was covering the topic, "Snow Removal Liability Issues & Concerns". I was able to get John to speak at an event a few years ago and knew he would be the perfect fit. The basic things you need to address to protect yourself in today's sue everyone atmosphere was some excellent information. John's experience with what has worked to protect from having to pay a big settlement is just using common sense and documentation. It was priceless. Our next speaker was Joshua Smilk, Owner of Eastern LLC, a snow removal contractor. Josh was playing hurt! He had fallen the night before and was pretty sure he had broken his ankle. He told me he would be there on crutches and head to the doctor afterwards. He just needed a podium to lean on. He did over a 45 minute talk standing on one leg! Cannot say thank you enough to Josh for not canceling! His talk was about brine. Josh covered some of the basic science behind it and some of the different situations for use. It was really an interesting topic.
Our final speaker of the day was Matt Brown, of Lawn & Golf. Matt's topic was "Winterizing your sprayer". Matt did a great job focusing on what is the key to all sprayers working to the optimum...cleaning it! Matt also spent a significant amount of time covering one of the most important part of chemical application, safety. Matt covered all the recommended safety precautions that sometimes get skipped to make up time.

A big thank you goes out to our corporate partners at the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs and their Director of Field Operations, Ryan Hills, for hosting us! Thanks to Andy Barone, of Ventrac, for coming into to town to support the event.
A special thanks to Bill Brown, of Turf Republic, for joining us and taking some great photos.
Also, I cannot say thank you enough to our speakers!
We were happy to partner with the PGMS and look forward to doing it again in the future.