The final November project push

Monday started a little slower than normal as the concrete plant was having trouble with some of their equipment. The first truck showed up two hours late and ended up having too wet of a mix. After sending them back to the plant they got it right and the first yard of 58 for the week was poured into 17 greenside bunker.  

All 5 bunkers on 17 Manakin now have fresh drainage, liners and new sand in them. After a busy Monday and Tuesday pouring concrete the white sand came out from the shop and about 250 tons were laid out between the bunkers.  The sand has been tracked in, tamped down and smoothed out for play. This will most likely be the last bunkers we do in 2025 as we will need to get moving on the Manakin irrigation project after Thanksgiving. The area left to complete the bunkers on 11, 13, 14 and 16 is slightly more than what we just finished on 17 and 18. The remaining work will get tackled in February and March.

The Sabot team got after another drainage project on Monday near 2 approach. Almost 300 feet was cut with the trencher and the soil removed. The newly installed french drain should help keep this cart exit area dry through the season. You can see the shade from the trees back further in the fairway where we did some drainage over the past years. Overall this fairway has improved massively but the trees on the left combined with the low sun angle in the winter will keep that section of fairway thin during winter.

An angry cold front came through Wednesday night and left us a decent frost blanket wherever we weren't covered in leaves. The trees are starting to thin slightly but there are still plenty of leaves left to come down.

The blowers and sweepers have been working non stop during the day removing leaves from the in play tree lines. About the only advantage tall fescue created over the bermuda was the ability to chop some of these leaves up. The dormant bermuda demands that we remove the leaves completely and haul them up to the dump area left of 1 Sabot. This is a time consuming process but better overall for the health of the  shaded bermuda rough.

Leaf season will roll on next week as we work around Thanksgiving. After next week we will say goodbye to 8 more seasonal employees until April 1st and hello to 650 more sprinkler heads that need to be dug up and re-wired. See you in December!