SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — Dozens of volunteers with a Sioux Falls accounting firm stepped out of the office to help spruce up a couple of city parks Thursday. The cleanup at Cherry Rock and Riverdale parks was all part of Eide Bailly’s Community Day. The project involved plenty of heavy lifting, and bonding along the riverbank.

Hauling large tree branches can be a taxing chore when you work at an accounting firm.

“It is hard work. Yeah. It makes people appreciate their day jobs,” Eide Bailly Market Leader Jim Jarding said.

More than 100 employees of Eide Bailly spent the day clearing brush and debris from along the Big Sioux River as part of their 15th annual Community Day. The heavy branches become a much lighter load when everyone pitches in.

“Sometimes you just gotta drag it through the brush, at least there’s some clear ways through, plus, gotta practice some teamwork and lift the big ones together,” Logan Remmers of Eide Bailly said.

Getting split up into teams also allows the Eide Bailly employees to connect with co-workers they otherwise don’t see during the course of their workday, if ever.

“I mean, sometimes, I only see them once a year here at Community Day because we’re on three different floors in our office building, so I usually stay to my one floor, so I don’t get to see a lot of the people very often,” Dylan Shaw of Eide Bailly said.

Sioux Falls police were posted nearby to ensure everyone stayed safe during the cleanup. Officers say the removal of all this brush will make it easier for them to patrol the parks.

“It helps us because now we’re able to take our ATV’s and our UTV’s, bicycles or what have you and actually make those trails through the woods and makes it easier for us get through and patrol them,” Verlyn Bleyenberg of the Sioux Falls Police Department said.

These Eide Bailly workers obviously don’t spend all their time behind a desk. A lot of them are regular users of the parks, so a project like this is very important to them.

“I like to bike here a lot, so it’s great to see the work that we’re doing is useful and get to see, reap the benefits of everything that we’ve done today,” Shaw said.

Tree branches that have been collected along the river for years, gone in a matter of hours, thanks to volunteers giving back to the community.

“So we hope to leave it in a lot better shape than when we got here,” Jarding said.

The Eide Bailly landscaping chores also included hauling mulch that will help retain moisture in the soil for young trees in the parks.