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March 04, 2001
In winter, farmer
turns from fields to slopes
By The Associated
Press
VAIL - In the spring, Doug Flaagan's tractor sows
seeds on his farm in North Dakota. In the winter, his tractor harvests snow
on Vail Mountain.
"There's no difference," says the 33-year-old
from Tolna, N.D., as he pushes his snow groomer up
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| Doug Flaagan
stands atop Vail Mountain with his tractor, Dec. 4, 2000, in Vail,
Colo. In the spring, Flaagan's tractor sows seeds on his farm in North
Dakota. In the winter, his tractor harvests snow on Vail Mountain.(AP
Photo/The Denver Post, E. Pablo Kosmicki) |
a steep slope, leaving corduroy
snow in his wake. "Of course, there's no hills like this back home.
But all you want to do is keep everything nice and straight. You make
the hill look good, and you make the fields look good."
For 12 years, Flaagan has made the seamless transition
from sodbuster to snow groomer. Along the way, he's brought around 30
of his farming colleagues and introduced them to life in the Vail Valley.
Some of them have stayed to join the crew of about 60 groomers, finding
good work that compares to the earthy allure of farming. Others have returned
home, either because they got married, says Flaagan, or because they have
cattle to tend.
"You do it as long as you can," says
Flaagan, the foreman of the grooming crew, adding the 40 hours he spends
each week pushing snow "is like a vacation."
In Tolna, with its population of 250, springtime
planting of flax, wheat, barley and sunflower seeds means 12- to 16-hour
days, seven days a week.
"Then the spraying season comes around and
it really gets busy," says Flaagan, nudging his $180,000 snow machine
up a hill, while carefully bumping a joystick that maneuvers the giant
blade in front of the machine.
Once the crops in Tolna are harvested, farmers
there go looking for work. The options are limited, and Flaagan has convinced
his young fellow farmers to try Vail. The money's all right, he says,
certainly more than one can make during the winter back home.
But it's not all about the money. Vail is about
getting away from home, the farm, and living a divergent life for a few
months.
"It's a totally different world out here,"
says Flaagan, who waxes poetic when he sees the sun peek over the horizon
and splash orange across the Mount of the Holy Cross. He's a man who has
spent time alone with his thoughts in staggeringly picturesque country.
The bottom half of Flaagan's face is tanned from
wearing goggles on the slopes, a common sight in a ski town. But Flaagan
still holds to his roots, wearing cowboy boots and jeans with a well-worn
pocket for his tobacco tin - vintage farm town.
As he cruises up a steep pitch near the top of
the mountain, a snowmobiling employee scoots by. It's Bret Breckheimer,
the first Tolna farmer who came to Vail back in the winter of 1984.
For three winters, Breckheimer worked as a lift
operator in Vail and returned to Tolna for spring planting. The third
time he returned in 1987, he brought 11 Tolna farmboys, including Flaagan's
older brother. After three years, the mountain life hooked him, and he
stayed in the Eagle Valley, where he lives today.
"I came to play, and now it's home,"
says Breckheimer, who works as a lift mechanic for Vail. "Sure, I
miss life in Tolna, the community out there is wonderful. It's tight and
everyone is there for each other; something you certainly don't find in
Vail, where there's so much turnover each year."
Employee turnover is the bane of Vail Resorts.
Workers like Flaagan and Breckheimer, who go home and recruit for a company
that has searched for employees from the hinterlands of North Dakota to
the beaches of New Zealand, are invaluable, says Paul Fillion, director
of mountain operations at Vail.
"Doug doesn't like to train," Fillion
says with a chortle. "These guys have been a godsend. It's not only
that he's bringing in guys but they also already know the work. Their
work ethic is incredible."
It's not easy driving a tractor, especially on
steep icy slopes. And especially a tractor that essentially rests atop
"hundreds of ice skates," Flaagan says, pointing to the tracks
that only work when perpendicular to the slope. So when Flaagan calls
in the spring and asks Vail Resorts to line up housing for a crew of young
men who have been driving tractors since they were 8 years old, company
officials are more than eager to help.
"These returning second-, third-, fourth-year
people are just worth their weight in gold," says Les Marsh, vice
president of human resources for Vail Resorts, noting return employees
are mainly Coloradans and more than half of new employees come from out
of state.
Word of mouth from employees who carry their intoxicating
Rocky Mountain experience home is the most effective recruiting tool,
Marsh says.
"Returning employees are the key to our success
and in an ideal world, they come back and bring people with them,"
he says.
But make no mistake, this is just an off-season
job for Flaagan. Farming, as demanding as it can be, is in his blood.
"Sure this pays a few of the bills back home,
and I'm having a good time," he says. "Farming isn't easy, but
I tell you what, it's the best life around."
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