We have had it all this week as the deep tine machine worked its way through both golf courses. Warm, cold, sunny, rainy and constant wind will summarize most days this winter.
After starting with some smaller tines on a different machine and not getting a clean hole, we moved to a different aerator and some half inch solid tines on wider spacing. These tines are going 8-9 inches deep into the green creating a nice space for winter root growth and water infiltration. The roller is out now smoothing everything out for the weekend.
In some drizzle on Monday we had Bartlett tree out to take down this rotting oak hanging over the golf shop. This tree had accelerated the dropping of its branches this year and the base of the tree was really showing some unhealthy symptoms. The bucket truck made safe work of getting this tree down without putting a hole in the golf shop. They also had enough time to get us started on a large oak tree overhanging the baby pool that was also in bad shape and liked to deposit 100 oak leaves every day of the summer. Both trees are a distant memory now and the stumps will be ground in January.
This was not a tree you wanted hanging over a building.
While we had our 1 budgeted day of a pro tree company on site this week we also have our 1 budgeted week of a giant excavator working to reset the dump area this week. With the burn permit secured and some rain to dampened the area we dug a huge hole and started getting rid of a decent amount of debris that had continued to pile up over the years. Managing the area left of 1 Sabot is an unattractive but important task so that we can get in and out efficiently and keep projects like bunker work, sod work and simple leaf removal going.
Most of the staff has been over on 17 and 16 Manakin this week plugging away on the irrigation renovation. Our repurposed water wick plow is hanging in there. This attachment is probably 25+ years old and with a new blade on it continues to work nicely through the Manakin.
The guys have their system working as far as digging the hole, pulling the wire, connecting and installing the new solenoid and then backfilling the hole. Dylan here is one of our main wire guys but after two years of work at Hermitage he has decided to pursue a turf degree at Horry Georgetown in South Carolina. He is going to venture out across the country somewhere for his first official internship but we are sure he'll circle back to us eventually. Thank you and good luck Dylan!
