Chester Bradshaw surveys the kids hauling branches, burning brush and handling electric chain saws.
"There's something you don't see too much of anymore," he said. "Teens sweating."
If it were any other Saturday, Shawn Rouse said, he would still be sleeping. Instead, the 16-year-old Inverness teen found himself tending a brush pile on the edge of Potts Preserve. Despite the 90-degree heat, he didn't mind, he said. He may volunteer to do it again, even after he finishes his community service.
Rouse "got in trouble," as he says, without further elaboration. To pay his debt to society, he has agreed to help Bradshaw as part of the Citrus County Teen Court, a diversionary program.
This spring, Bradshaw, a former cattle rancher and environmental activist, first approached Tom Moore, director of the Teen Court, about having kids serve their community service with him.
With his passion for restoring the Withlacoochee watershed, he is always looking for help cleaning out brush, trash and debris. Bradshaw said he had thought of incorporating teens into his projects for years after working as a Sunday school teacher and guidance counselor.
The first group of six began working with Bradshaw two months ago. Since then, he has kept a steady crew of at least five, and as many as 10, working every Saturday.
Often the teenagers choose their service, Moore said, which can include working at the county dump, calling bingo at convalescent homes, shelving books at the library, helping at a wildlife rehabilitation clinic or building low-income housing. Moore said many youth perform about 50 hours of community service and thus avoid the juvenile justice system. All of the kids who come before Teen Court have committed first-offense misdemeanors, mostly for crimes such as shoplifting, vandalism, alcohol possession and trespassing.
Working with Bradshaw, said Adrian Aguiar, 14, of Homosassa, "you don't have to give shots to any animals."
The projects give them a sense of responsibility to a greater cause and ask them to make decisions and to think outside themselves. With the community service projects, Moore said, "they began to see the value in what they were doing."
Many have not spent much time in the outdoors, Bradshaw said.
On Saturday, most were excited just to learn how to work an electric chain saw.
"The most important thing is learning to work together as a team," Bradshaw said. "A lot of these kids feel like loners and that's how they get into trouble in the first place."
Some of the work includes hauling scrub and cleaning out mucky streams, but there are the fringe benefits of hefting tools, riding on airboats and netting fish. "They are sweaty, dirty, happy," Bradshaw said.
On a recent weekend, Bradshaw and the teens netted minnows, moving them by truck and aerated tank to barren bodies of water, in hopes of replenishing the stocks.
As the kids checked the status of those minnows on Saturday, Inverness City Council member Jacquie Hepfer said the kids aren't bad, they just did stupid teenage stuff. And volunteering with them doesn't mean sitting in a courtroom either.
"You can come get dirty and nasty with us on the weekend," she said.
Word has spread about the program, and Moore said he has received calls from Citrus County commissioners and the Southwest Florida Water Management District about potential projects for the crew.
But Aguiar was not concerned about the future. He was just enjoying his work in the woods Saturday.
"I love this place," he said. "I love this place more than anywhere in the world."
