Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  We continue to get hit with rain and it has now been over a month since we have had more than 3 days in a row without some sort of precipitation. This week we got fed up with 13 fairway not draining and just went for it in the face of mother nature. Using our fancy plastic mats we laid out paths for our trencher and progators and went to work. Last year we had put drainage here in 13 fairway but it was with a smaller trencher that went shallow and we tried to just use gravel and sand, no pipe. This area has proved to be extremely wet this year so we went back in with the big trencher, cutting a 20 inch deep trench. We have tightened up the spacing of the trench lines and expanded outwards as well. This work will continue into next week as we cut some more lines on the left side of the fairway in order to answer any questions about this area being wet ever again. Water has been pouring out 13 fairway since we started cutting trenches. The drain lines will be filled up with gravel ...

  It has been tough to get a full break from the rain the past few weeks. As soon as we get close to drying out the rain comes right back. None of that is unexpected however so everyone is just grinding away. The irrigation guys have moved on to Sabot 17, digging holes, running laterals and installing new heads. Our 20 year old skidsteer was retired this week. After 4,000 hours this machine has served its purpose unloading sod, loading sand and gravel, moving around fertilizer and who knows what else.  Another Takeuchi rubber tracked loader has taken its place. The rubber tracks give us more versatility than rubber tires and this machine also came with a grapple that will help us move logs around much more safely than just a set of forks. The tracks allow us to do more soil work like building tees and modifying things around the course. We now have two of these machines so service and operations is easy on the crew. This is another great piece of the capital renewals and repla...

  After a quick break the irrigation company was back at it and finished up the mainline loop this week. The two mile loop of 8 and 6 inch HDPE pipe ended up back here left of 10 black tee where it connected to our feed pipe from the pumphouse. With the mainline complete the real fun begins with running all the 2" lateral pipes to the sprinkler heads. The 2" pipe comes in a 1,000 foot roll of pipe which eliminates any and all connections besides where the heads tap in. Each lateral pipe is measured and then hooked to the vibratory plow and pulled through the soil as opposed to trenching like the larger mainline pipe. The wire (it is really two wires in one casing) is pulled right along with the pipe. Luckily we ended up with a brand new plow this year so the heaving is a little less than last year. The crew will work 18 backwards to 10 and take about a week per hole depending on the weather. It is a giant mess! 18 is one of the more complicated install holes with 7 of the 20 ...