DAVENPORT, Iowa — If you ever get overwhelmed by mowing your own grass, try having nearly 650 acres of it.
Keaton Frye is the vice president of Davenport-based Seven Cities Sod. He's just one of several generations of his family to make a career of watching grass grow.
"Who doesn't want to be outside and play with tractors all day?" Frye said.
His grandfather planted the company's first plot of grass in the late 1960s. Now, they've become the second-largest sod operation in Iowa. Seven Cities supplies the sod for new home construction in the Quad Cities, and they also grew the sod used in "Field of Dreams."
"It's all robotic arms, GPS driven," Frye said. "No hands on the wheels, I'm able to just kind of monitor and make sure we're cutting the best product that we can and send it on down the road."
Their Kentucky Bluegrass is 18 months old and is now being harvested for the new homes built by North Scott students.
"This year was a little different. We were able to start harvesting, the earliest we've ever started in our history," Frye said.
Historically, sod harvest time begins in April. In 2024, it was March. Lots of spring rain helped the sod grow quickly.
"I've heard from a ton of people this year that, 'Oh my gosh, what do I do? I can't keep up on mowing this, that and the other.' It's a nice problem to have, as opposed to not having enough water," Frye said.
That's not to say last year was a bad year for sod. Frye and his team were harvesting up until Christmas, which is about a month longer than normal.
"We ended up just shutting it down just because we were worried about that we were cutting too deep into our 2024 acres," he said.