Many of you know it is our responsibility for the snow removal at the club and around the tennis dome. The difficult part of this is the maintenance shop is a long way from where our responsibilities lie. We have ½ mile maintenance road to negotiate in the event of blowing and drifting snow. While it most times it is not a big deal at times it can be a big deal. Last week during the heavy snows we had one of our employees get to close to the edge of the road and the truck got a tire just off and we had to call in a tow truck.
The heavy snow fall has also been a bit of an issue at the tennis dome. If you think about the dome it is 70’ from the bottom of the dome to the top, so a 1” snow = 70” piled up at the bottom. We used shovels to get the snow away and then we snow blow it out. Usually not an issue for us but twice this winter we have had to go out on to the area where we blow the snow and pull it all back to give us more room to blow more snow. Not a typical problem for us but this winter is a bit unusual.
There are several areas where the snow piles up and we must take the time to blow it out of our way to allow for more snow removal. If we did not have this tractor mounted snow blower, we would have huge piles of snow all around the parking lots. This one piece of equipment has been an invaluable tool for us in our snow removal.
We had a big thaw the last week of January at that time the turf looked very good under the greens covers. Then the snows of February came, and we have been covered up since. We were out of the golf courses yesterday and we do have a small layer of ice under the snow but it is very porous so we don’t think at this time there will be any issues. Looking forward to a big melt soon but the temperatures are not very conducive for it in the 7-day forecast.
We are very aware of the new rules of golf that we are all going to experience this spring. We have been working several years with a great Iowa based company called Standard Golf Company out of Cedar Falls, Ia. One of the new items in their line this year is a narrow flag stick at the base to allow for more room for the ball to get into the cup if you choose to leave the flag stick in the cup. We will be using these flag sticks for the season. I would appreciate your feedback on them if you have any ideas or thoughts on their performance.
One of things we have done for several years is to collect the sap from some of the maple trees on the golf course. We boil this sap down to make maple syrup. We then usually do a breakfast with the pro shop staff to kick off the season. Cooking down the sap is a very long process and it can be costly to me because I supply the propane cooker to do this. This year we built a wood stove to do it. We have plenty of firewood to use and this should make a little less expensive once the sap starts to run.
We are now back in the maintenance shop finishing up some small detail projects. We will be painting the interior of the shop. We will be doing the walls and the floors. This is something we try to do every couple of years. It is always nice to have a clean and well-organized shop to work out even if it is an aging building.
That is all for now, hopefully my next blog posting will be about the golf courses and you getting ready to play golf.