This time of year, you probably don’t see your lawn all that much.
That’s just how it goes in this little corner of the world during the fall months. Those bright and colorful leaves that people drive around for hours on end just to look at, eventually turn brown – and fall all over the place.
So you spend your afternoons and weekends raking all those leaves to the curb, just hoping that the leaf fairies come and pick them up before Mother Nature blows them back to where you just moved them from.
But as it turns out, there aren’t such things as leaf fairies – at least that I could find. Instead, all your leaves magically disappear thanks to the leaf collection crews at Concord General Services.
If you haven’t seen the trucks out and about, each year the city deploys three crews (Penacook, South End and East Side) to gather all the leaves in the city. Each crew consists of five to six guys, two trucks and one of those very large leaf sucker uppers.
They each have a different area of town to work through and barring any sudden instances of wintry weather, they’ll keep going until they hit every road.
Most of you probably leave for work with a pile outside your house and then it’s gone when you get home. So in all likelihood, you don’t have the slightest clue how it all goes down.
Don’t worry, I not only checked out the operation last week, but also took part. As you know, we like to try things here at the Insider. To see what they’re all about for ourselves.
I was told to show up at General Services dressed appropriately, which meant warm clothes, and steel-toe boots. The only problem is I didn’t own a pair. After contacting what felt like everyone I knew, Jon was able to locate a pair for me. Don’t ask how, all that matters is that I had boots.
I hooked up with the East Side crew on the Heights and got a chance to see just how it all works before jumping aboard.
So one guy drives the dump truck (at a very slow rate I might add) where the vacuum is attached to. Another guy drives the second truck and they trade off once one is full and have to dump it at one of many locations used by the city.
The vacuum is operated by another crew member and the rest use some heavy duty rakes to get the big piles to a more manageable size to suck up.
And there was no tip toeing my way into it. I was put on vacuum duty right away as we departed down Heights Road, the first right off Airport Road. It’s big and unlike anything I had used before, so it took a little time to get used to it. The key is to get it swaying back and forth. You try to cut down the edge of the pile so the rakers can force feed you more leaves. Just try not to suck up your pant leg.
After filling up a truck, I moved over to raking duty because the crew always switches off who operates the vacuum with each new truck, and I wasn’t about to shake things up. Plus, I got the idea of how it works and by this point, after not much time, I was sweating up a storm.
Not that pushing a big metal rake was going to stop that. But, hey I wanted the whole experience and this is what I signed up for. The only thing I didn’t get to do was drive the truck, although I’m pretty sure the city wouldn’t want me doing that anyway.
While I only spent about an hour with the crew (a portion of that talking to them during their morning break) I got a good look at what their daily lives are like for about six weeks.
Each crew gathers about 30 to 40 tons a day (about 16 truck loads), and all three crews will produce roughly 1,600 tons over the course of clearing the 220 miles of roads in Concord. No wonder it takes them a month and a half – and that’s when they get good weather.
But it doesn’t come without challenges. Rain will pack the leaves down, piles under trees and bushes are harder to get and parked vehicles make it almost impossible to collect the piles.
It’s a tough job because when it all began on Halloween, there were still lots of leaves on the trees and some hadn’t even begun to rake. While they want to pick up every leaf in the city, they’ve got to start somewhere and just can’t spend all their time continuously back tracking.
But if the snowy weather holds off they’ll keep going and if you’re lucky, come back for those leaves you’ve put out since they passed through. Just don’t expect me to be there. My leaf collection days are now limited to my own yard.
