It has been a great winter for us in the golf course maintenance department, despite the ugly weather that we have endured over the last 10 days. We were able to be out on the golf course late into December and prune some trees that needed some attention. We also had recommendations from Tim Liddy our golf course architect to remove certain trees on a few holes to open the playing corridors to make them more playable. I will let up see if you can tell where they were removed once you get back out this spring.
We have had 2 fulltime positions open since last May. It is becoming extremely difficult to find young people that want to be in this profession and do the work. Over the winter time I feel very fortunate to fill both of those 2nd assistant superintendent positions with some very good candidates. Cree Slough was the golf course superintendent at Clarinda Country Club in Clarinda, Iowa. Cree wanted to broaden his work knowledge and staying in his home town was not getting it done for him. Jeremy Grefe was working at Blue Mound Country Club in Milwaukee, Wis. Jeremy is a native Iowan and he too thought coming to DMGCC would be a good move for him to further his career. Both gentlemen started in January with us and we are delighted to have them here working with us.
Our mower grinding is nearing completion. We just have a few bed knives left to grind and the mowers will be ready to go for 2019. Our paint booth has been extremely busy and that too is now wrapping up and we will be putting together all of the ball washers and benches. They look awesome, Rueben Robles our in-house paint man does a great job of painting with his paint gun. Other guys have been busy making new tee markers and painting bench boards. Before all of these items can ben painted, they are sanded down to remove the old coats of paint and to rough up the surface a little so the new paint can adhere to the fixture.
I am thankful that we have not had a tremendous amount of snow because the snow fall causes us to leave the shop to handle the snow removal and then we fall behind with indoor items. The 6” – 8” that we do have on the ground is a nice insulation blanket against these frigid temperatures that we experienced this past week. The turf looked good before the snowfall.
We have our annual Golf Industry Show next week in San Diego. I am looking forward to going this year. A few things on my radar screen are to look at new seed/soil boxes for our par 3 tees. The old ones are in bad condition and we need to upgrade to a newer one that will hold up and look nice. I am attending a seminar on GPS sprayers and trying to learn that technology. I find it very interesting and the claim of these industry people is that you will save $ because of the accuracy of the sprayer. We have retro fitted one of our units this winter and look forward to trying them out. It has been extremely difficult over the last few years to find employees for our seasonal crew. There is a big move in our industry to go to fully autonomous mowers for greens and fairways. I expect a big push from the manufactures to have these units for us to look at the Golf Industry Show. I will update you on these upon my return.
I hope to update you once again on a regular basis, so please check back and see what we are up to. Thank you.