I spent a majority of the day at several tree farms in Morganton, NC- about 130 miles (2.5 hour drive) east of Highlands. This farm has some great specimen trees, particularly Norway Spruce. There were 2 objectives- on Town of Highlands Business, I selected the new town Christmas Tree that will be moved to Kelsey Hutchison Park...a nice 28' tall, 10' diameter Norway Spruce. On Club business, I selected about 10 trees for the practice facility.
You might recall, the initial plan was to move existing trees on the golf course to the range. However, it doesn't look like the weather will cooperate. The rain continues to fall and doesn't appear to be clearing in the next 14 days. Although temperatures will be cooling back down in a few days, it isn't ground freezing temperatures. The 90" tree spade that was planned, simply will destroy areas of the golf course and most likely sink in the saturated ground and our heavy soils. The initial goal of timing it with freezing ground doesn't look like it will happen. That means it is off to plan B- get the largest tree and root ball that we can handle with our equipment and my staff will plant them. While the trees won't be as large, they will still work well. Rather than a 25' tree with a 90" root ball, we will settle on 15-18' trees with a 60" root ball- something we can lift with our equipment. It just isn't worth risking damage to the golf course and breaking cart paths with a piece of equipment that is the size of a double axel dump truck and weighs even more. While this weather pattern continues, all landscape and construction type work contractors in the area are falling behind schedule in a major way. There is no guarantee that the tree spade could even get to our job in a timely manner.