Hi Lawn-Pros,
My wife and I and several other famlys are involved with a small local cemetery.
This cemetery association owns the equipment which includes two rear discharge ZTR machines. The cemetery is 200 years old and in two parts is 18 acres total. There are old and new sections, the old section is sold out and except for dirt roads formed in basic square sections has no regularity to its layout. The new section except for the first two rows has been layed out in line to make mowing etc easier. Of the total 18 acres about six acres had been hayed but that stopped three years ago. We mow this section when needed with an old Gravely Convertable/sulky and pay for it when done.The rest of the cemetery gets mowed and trimmed 3-4 times a season. The cemetery pays the mowing crew $1,200 for each mowing and as I said the cemetery association owns the equipment and I maintain the equipment. We periodically fertilize both sections and I do it with a garden tractor with the mower deck removed and a tow behind 150 LB spreader. I charge the cemetery $40 per hour to do this with my own machine and I usually spread 1,000 LBS from 75 LB bags. This usually takes me 2 hours and I do wear a dust mask, very important!!! I have no idea how many gravestones there are, but in the new part we only permit flat ground plates and no more gravestones. We initially thought that this would reduce maintenance costs however the overgrowth on the ground plates has become a problem and possibly not the cost savings that we initially anticipated. Each row of ground plate marked graves has a stone post marker at each end that are easily seen and identified but there are some that will drive over this area as if it was a Walmart parking lot.
Mad Mackie in CT:biggrin::laughing: