Turf Care at Capital Camps: Grounds maintenance is challenging at youth facility

摘要

Working in maintenance at a kids' camp takes a special kind of person, one with creativity and flexibility, as well as a love for turf. Eric Leaper, director of facilities at Capital Camps (www.capital camps.org), possesses those traits as he overseesthe turf care at the camp tucked in the mountains of Waynesboro, Pa. The land where Capital Camps now sits started as a girls' camp in the 1920s and 1930s, called Camp Wohelo. A boys' camp was added in the 1960s, and Capital Camps bought the property in1987. Fundrais-ing began soon after to renovate the entire property into a state-of-the-art camping facility for Jewish children from the greater Washington, D.C., area. The property has evolved over the past 24 years with the addition of an aquatics center, demolition of the old camp and construction of new camp facilities. Within the last 10 years, Capital Camps renovated their campgrounds into villages. "This new construction project consisted of 20 new camper cabins, four new directors' cabins, a new theater arts building and a new staff lodge," Leaper explains. "This gave us four separate and distinct 'villages' of different age groups."