We had a maintenance member quit one of our Farms in August, and we were without landscape and barn maintenance. It’s a real wake up call when someone leaves, and all of a sudden, you realize how much they do for your business.
We don’t live in Oklahoma City on a full-time basis, so when one of our farms loses a valuable asset like an employee, we don’t immediately notice the impact of the loss. However, when we paid a visit after three weeks, it became evident that we were short a team member. The grass had grown to lengths that were not acceptable for a commercial property. We have clients that come and go all week, our grounds need to be kept and tidy.
We all jumped in and tag-teamed the property until we could hire someone. The interview process took longer than anticipated, and we ended up contracting a lawn service company in OKC that was able to manage the lawn and garden care for a few months.
After two months of paying for the maintenance, we concluded that hiring a lawn care company to keep the property maintained was the better option. I’m curious how other horse properties deal with this dilemma. Landscaping services are expensive, but so is hiring an employee and keeping them happy. There are other things to take into consideration like insurance, time off, and end of year bonuses.
Some other benefits came along with contracting this work. For instance, we had wanted to lay irrigation pipes for the past few years, but our maintenance guy didn’t have the knowledge to accomplish that. Hiring a professional landscape service has allowed us to exercise new ideas on gardening and irrigation that we weren’t able to before. We have since installed the irrigation, made updates to the fencing, planted new shrubs, and gave the entry area a cosmetic overhaul.
Oklahoma City is an area where plant-life grows really well, so having a lawn and garden caretaker is a necessary must if you have a commercial property that receives foot traffic. Our clients come and go all month long and the landscaping needs to be maintained, our recommendation for our sister farms is that you hire a lawn and garden maintenance team to care for your property.