The beat goes on...

We've had a good bit of rain lately, but some beautiful days as well.  It is truthfully surreal to be on the golf course on a lovely spring day and see no golfers.  While the lack of golfers has the advantage of allowing us to perform most any task at any time of the day, it is just plain strange. 

This unusual time has also made us aware of how focused we have always been on avoiding play while maintaining the golf course.  For example, if you're repairing a fairway sprinkler at 11:00 in the morning, you can't help but instinctively keep looking back at the tee to make sure nobody is hitting at you.

Solid tining #1 fairway mid-day.

Another difference we are dealing with is the size of our crew.  By April 1, we were scheduled to have 20 employees in the department.  Instead, we are now operating with the core group of 11 year round employees.  This is a huge difference, but we feel very fortunate to still have this dedicated staff, all of whom are doing an outstanding job during this challenging time.

We are currently wrapping up some small projects, as the shift to mowing is right around the corner.

The grass doesn't know...

In the words of Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast..."  It does indeed--certainly when we started planning for the 2020 golf season last fall, nobody could have known the challenges everyone is currently dealing with.

However, despite all that's happening in the world right now, the grass isn't aware.  The lack of winter, and some warm temperatures have the daffodils up and the forsythia in full bloom.  The dormant Bentgrass is starting to go from beige to green, and the darned geese are attempting to nest.  Soon, the mowing requirements on the course will increase dramatically.

With only key staff currently working, hand mowing greens isn't a viable option.

At the moment, we are trying to carefully balance the needs of the golf course, along with the well-being of our staff.  Fortunately, if "distancing" is the goal, having 237 acres of open space allows us to easily spread out.

Getting a head start on Master Plan work

Part of the upcoming Master Plan work this year includes a new putting green, new tees on #1 and #10, and a short game area.  With these improvements, new irrigation will also be installed.

While the construction work isn't scheduled to begin until late summer, we decided to tackle some of the initial irrigation work now, by installing valves for the new lines.  In order to do this, we traced the main line, excavated around it, and cut out a section of pipe.  For the putting green/#1 tees, this was replaced with a tee, a gate valve and two couplings.  (This project was a great opportunity to use some of the couplings we purchased last year from an ad on Turfnet.)

For the short game area and #10 tees, we added a new main line gate valve in addition to the valve for the new irrigation.

So why did we do this work now?  Had this been done in-season, when the irrigation system was in use, we would have had to isolate a significant portion of the system to install these valves, and deal with a whole lot of water when we cut the pipes.  A winter install meant no water in the lines, and no need to shut down part of the system.

By having these isolation valves in place ahead of time, the irrigation contractor will be able to add the new lines without shutting down any of our existing irrigation, then simply open the valves when they're ready to go.

Another Tricky Task

One of the projects we try to tackle each winter is cleaning up some of the pond banks on the golf course.  Many of the ponds have "volunteer" trees growing in and around the water line, making it difficult to cut and remove them.

Typically we can just wait for some nice cold weather so we can access this vegetation from the ice.  Unfortunately, once again, this warm winter has created a new challenge.

This year we had to use a combination of lopping shears, a power pole pruner, a chain saw, and some rakes to cut and retrieve the limbs.  The job got done, but it was a lot more time-consuming and tricky than usual.