You may be finished but we're not

Sort of the same theme as last year at this time.  Now that the golfing season is done we are are in a race against Mother Nature to get everything wrapped up before the weather goes funky.  We still need to finish aerating fairways, scout and fall beetle trees, finish installing irrigation on the driving range and prep for seeding in the spring, begin our winter disease prevention sprays, collect all the accessories on the course, deep tine aerate the greens, install tree protectors on the planted trees, blow the city lines on the golf course, find the buried steel sleeves and install the fencing around the greens, tarp certain greens, finish installing new fuel tanks at the shop, and ????? all before the snow flies.

Frosty mornings play havoc with most of what we need to do but we work with the weather by starting those jobs that can be done without driving on the turf.  I am sorry to say, but it is nice not having any golfers around since we are free to move about without having to watch for balls or people, especially when it comes to tasks such as falling trees and applying control products for disease prevention on the turf.  I'm not the only one that feels that way.......somebody must have sent out a memo the day we closed.

Sow and Cub #1 Fwy

Some of the many deer all over the course

Driving Range Update

We finished the sodding of the tee deck in that pouring rain of a couple of Fridays ago.  We were covered in slimy goo so there was no pictures of the process but here is one of the end result.

Driving Range Tee

 As mentioned previously, we are trying to finish installing the irrigation and get things back filled and levelled in anticipation of seeding in the spring.  A rough accounting of the project up to this point includes: cat work ($7950), irrigation ($2960), sod ($3800), miscellaneous (mostly shipping: $1500), labor ($1700 approximately - defined by the fact that two extra people stayed on extra time to help with our regular fall work), and most  likely the remaining expenses for this phase of the project are those associated with seeding ($1500-$2000) which just over $18 000 (plus the labour costs).  Not quite the $100,000+ the rumour mill was churning out but hopefully it will look like we spent that much!  I guess the hope is we have a nice spring that will allow us to get on the range early so we can seed.  Once the sod is rooted and we have the irrigation working people will be able to hit balls.  The worst part will be picking the balls in the goo but maybe we'll get a quick catch and that will be a short lived inconvenience.