Two more inches of rain came down on Monday bringing our annual total to 64 inches. We are now 20 inches over our normal annual total of 44 inches. At least when it rains our waterfalls on 5 stream look nice. We are continuing to build and tweak these features on 5 as the rain and water flow tells us what to do.
We have to keep telling ourselves this amount of moisture is not normal. When taken in consideration the extra rain, things are relatively dry. Olvin and Maggie took some time this week to start tying in our sand drainage lines to the basins. Some of the basins are in rough shape anyway so opening them up and making sure the pipes are attached correctly is going to go a long way.
It doesn't get any easier to see the results of our bluegrass survival experiment on the Sabot now thanks to the frost. Full sun fairways are very sparse while shaded areas of fairways are not terrible. However, the seed that we put down the first week of October has done nothing. Despite the moist conditions it doesn't seem like the seed liked just being dropped into a growing bermudagrass canopy. There is still some hope for the spring but we will have change things up next fall and make sure we are super aggressive again in getting any new bluegrass seed down. It is kind of hard to grow in a cool season surface when our warm season bermuda wants to keep growing clear into November.
Tree work also continued on the Sabot where it was dry enough to get the equipment into. Down the left side of 3 a few trees were taken out in order to get some more sun on that fairway to help it dry out. Right of 6 here more trees were removed to help get the sun on this green faster in the morning. A lot of tree work will stayed focused on the front of the Sabot this winter. Improving air flow, reducing cartpath damage, maximizing morning sun and improving aesthetics are all being focused on.
Over on the Manakin (and the Sabot rough) we are putting out our first poa annua pre-emergent application. Two of our three sprayers didn't make it past #2 however. Spraying 150 acres in between rain storms is tough enough without your equipment failing you. Dunstano and Carlos are always quick to jump into action though and we should be pretty close to being finished tomorrow.
Back on dry land we tackled some storage issues at our facility. We have three small storage containers that house all of our tools and supplies for both courses. They have long been pretty dark and just a conglomerated mess.
All three units (there is one more to the right) were cleaned out, painted white and re-organized. Having the right tools to do the job go a long way in managing a 500 acre property. Making them readily available is also imperative to running an efficient operation!
Enjoy these frosty cold mornings!
