Saturday morning cleanup

The rare weather this weekend presented a few challenges for the maintenance staff. On Friday, 50mph gusts brought down a lot of leaves and pine needles.  When the staff arrived Saturday, every blower we own was out the door!  I used 4 tanks of fuel in my backpack blower alone!  White pine needles specifically, are difficult to blow because they don't move far in grass, making them our nemesis. This requires more back and forth with the tractor.  After the front nine fairways were finished being blown at 11:30am, our operator, Jerry, noticed an oil leak coming from the gear box on the blower.  This isn't a good thing. That said, the blower was taken out of commission and we were unable to clean the back nine Fairways.  After a 10am start golf was already on the back nine, making blowing fairways an impossible task at this point.  With our only fairway blower out of commission, we will be using a smaller unit Sunday morning and doing the best we can. Your patience is appreciated. Losing your only blower in the middle of leaf season isn't ideal but Paul will have it up and running later in the week.  On Monday, he will be able to order the neccesary parts.  

As I said before, our continued tree maintenance program helps with this by backing trees away from playing surfaces.  However, we have a long way to go. Trees can be a nice addition when properly planted but when growing on top of playing surfaces, fallen leaves, acorns, pine combs, etc come with the territory.  We do make an effort to keep staff on the course with backpack blowers but to have every green clear for every group isn't practical.  Eventually it comes down to what the priority is...the game of golf or an arboretum around greens. 

I recently read a good quote, "think about why you don't find grass growing in a forest or trees growing on a sod farm."  Of course the answer is: there is no sunlight and too much root competition in a forest for grass to grow and on a sod farm, trees would result in poor quality turf that wouldn't be of value.  Grass requires 8 hours of direct sun/day, good air movement and well drained soils. The game of golf requires quality turf achieved through those environmental conditions and playing surfaces void of debris. Trees work against us as a staff and you as a golfer. A golf course inundated with trees requires more water, more pesticides, more fertilizer and more labor. What most would think is an environmental asset, in this case, results in more negative consequences.