By marketing their cows as low methane, the brothers have found a niche selling premium milk to London coffee shops. The feed supplement has an added commercial benefit for the farm. “The carbon credits are a real opportunity … to offset that cost for farmers,” he says. “It’s difficult to make a living from dairy farming, there’s bills to pay all of the time,” says Joe Towers, who runs the farm with his brother Ed. The hybrid surface will also allow him to transition from bluegrass, which offered "structure" in winter, to perennial ryegrass, used by English Premier League teams.Brades Farm brands itself as climate-friendly, with "less cow burps" emblazoned on its cartons. "So obviously there are limitations when fighting Mother Nature like that."īut he admits he now has all the bells and whistles a groundskeeper can ask for - including underground heating and sensors, an upgraded irrigation system and an array of grow-lights that can cover 60 per cent of the field. "Millions of years told this plant this is what it should be doing at certain times of the year and we’re trying to tell it the opposite," he said. Heggie is an award-winning groundskeeper– he was named Sports Turf Manager of the Year in Canada in 2015 - but he’s not a miracle worker. "But this will give me the peace of mind in January, February, December - those shoulder seasons when I just know it’s tough and we can’t get the root structure that we need."įormer striker Sebastian Giovinco famously dismissed BMO Field as an "amateur field." Team president Bill Manning called it "a little bit of a cow pasture." "It’s not easy being a groundskeeper," said Heggie. The big bodies in the CFL trenches should find the field will not move below them as they butt heads. And he’s not someone you want mad at you.įor Heggie, the new hybrid grass should deliver a firmer, truer, more consistent playing surface - something Toronto FC players have been clamouring for. Before every game, Toronto FC captain Michael Bradley inspects the pitch.
"There’s very few groundskeepers around the world that get the support that I get." "The investment on this square of grass has been phenomenal," said Heggie.
And BMO Field will join Green Bay’s Lambeau Field - the only other stadium in North American with SISGrass - and London’s Wembley Stadium among others with a hybrid surface. When it’s all done, about five per cent of the surface will be artificial with the roots of the real grass attaching to the fibres. It will take 22 pallets, each weighing 448 kilograms and carrying 64 rolls of the artificial fibre. In the meantime the crews from SISGrass, based out of the Netherlands, are working around the clock installing what Heggie calls "Rebar for the soil." Heggie says the enhanced pitch will be ready for April 19 when Minnesota United comes to visit. Thursday was Day 3 with five or six more to go. Robert Heggie, director of grounds for Toronto FC, delivers the statistic with a hearty laugh. Pull them apart and tie them together and the fibres being stitched into the stadium by Lake Ontario would span the globe 1.2 times. The made-in-Abu-Dhabi fibres are 20 centimetres long and stitched 18 centimetres deep into the ground.Įach piece is actually six strands. Housed inside a tarpaulin cover - the eight Europeans staffing the machine find it cold in Canada - giant needles grab the polyethylene fibres and stuff them into the ground every 20 millimetres.
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