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Rappahannock
schools lose
mowing service
to drought
By Matt Pelkey
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
The rain didn't come. The grass didn’t grow. Bobby Graves Site Works folded. .
Now • Rappahannock schools need to find someone to mow their fields in the spring.
This past summer’s drought scorched much of the nation, with southeastern states suffering the most extreme conditions. Rappahannock County was among the areas hit, and the impact can be found in the search for a new lawn care service for the elementary and high school.
Bobby Graves, 43, started mowing the athletic fields for Rappahannock schools in the summer of 2005. He took care of the old football field at the high school, as well as the baseball, softball and soccer fields at the elementary school.
The schools were one of many jobs he had lined up for his one-man business, Bobby Graves Site Works, which he started about six years ago. He did commercial and residential lawn service, mowing, landscaping and seeding.
But Bobby Graves Site Works is no more, and Graves, who spent almost his entire life in Culpeper, has moved to North Carolina, where he works as a project manager for a construction company.
“Everything kinda folded about three months ago,* Graves said in a phone interview.
Graves mowed the schools’ fields through the fall this year, but at that point he was already in the hole.
“1 had to finish out the year with what 1 had,” he said.
Because of the drought, he
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