Sunshine and warm temperatures made for a tremendously successful service day project for Greene County High School last week.

Organizer Teresa Green says 526 high school students, staff and volunteers pitched in to rake 138 yards of leafs in 3 ½-hours last Thursday in Jefferson, Grand Junction and Scranton. She points out that despite the fact that the service day project has been going on since 1997, and it may look like it’s a well-oiled machine, there’s still quite a bit of working that goes into setting it up.

“It does take quite a bit of time because lots of times the people (whose lawns we rake) will move, and then we’ll have new yards, and we fit them in. Sometimes we have the same volunteers and then sometimes people get busy and we have different volunteers.”

However, Green says it’s all worth it because of the “real-world” experience that students receive.

“We go up and we greet the residents of the homes and we talk to them, and we work with community members. I think it’s just a great way for our community to see the great kids that we have here, and then also for our kids to visit with the adults of our community.”

All of the leaves were taken to the City’s yard waste dump site at Daubendiek Park. Volunteers were then treated to free donuts at Dunker’s by Matt and free bottled water from Jefferson Hy-Vee and Fareway.