2010 Photos

She's catching up!!!!

Last week I made the comment of wondering how much snow we will get when Mother Nature decides to catch up.

Well.......she's catching up very quickly at this point. We are in the middle of a lake effect snow band and pretty hefty winds are making life "fun" right now.

On a side note, I have added a poll to the right in hopes of getting an idea of who is visiting us. Please take a moment to click on the option that best describes the reason you are visiting. Thank you.

Good News!!!

We have been officially approved for an new irrigation pumping station to replace our current inefficient, unreliable and undersized pumps. We will begin with the site work asap and the new pumps will arrive in early April ready to do their thing.

The old pumps were installed well before we had all 36 holes and the fully irrigated Learning Center and operating at 600 gpm. At this capacity, it would take 12 hours or better if a heavy irrigating. The new pumps will provide 1200 gpm and will almost cut this time in half, the limiting factor being the pipe in the ground and not the pumps.

The new pumps are variable frequency drive (VFD) vertical turbine versus our current setup of centrifugal pumps. The advantage here is twofold. 1) The vertical turbines will never lose prime like the centrifugal, and 2) vertical turbines are more energy efficient that centrifugals to begin with, but are even more so with the VFD controls. What this means is that even though we have doubled the output of the station, we will have a very small increase in electrical requirements during the summer, if any. The VFDs are also much easier on the piping in the ground and will lead to many fewer leaks of the course of the season. Keep in mind that we will always have leaks, but they will be minimized with the VFD.

I am certainly excited about this approval and look forward to being able to better control the water from here on out.

As I sit here listening to the 26 mph wind pounding rain off the side of the building, I am reminded of the unusual weather patterns we have experienced this year.

We started the season by mowing greens in March for the first time since I came here in 2002 and now we have been relatively snow free up to this point. Normally we seem to have a foot of snow on the ground and expect it to remain until the first of April. Of course, we have seasonal averages for a reason and I wonder how much snow we will get once Mother Nature decides to catch up.

I will be posting a "Year in Review" within the next week. I am working off memory so if I leave anything out, please feel free to remind me and I will make the appropriate corrections.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Wow, the last month flew by quickly.

We have been working on year end details.....leaf clean up, bringing in and inspecting ball washers, tee signs, tee markers, etc.

Leaf clean up is finally on the down hill side with just the oak and silver maple leaves yet to fall. This week's two hard frosts have really helped bringing them to the ground and will make next spring's clean up a little easier.

The irrigation pumps have been winterized and the irrigation lines have been blown out with compressed air to prevent potential damage from winter freezing.

It is also time to apply our winter snow mold fungicides. There has been a large change to winter fungicide programs in the northern half of the US this season. The EPA has put a "stop sell" on the "go to" inexpensive fungicide for snow mold control, PCNB. There has been talk of this product being taken off the market for a couple years so this is not much of a surprise. The biggest impact on us is in the budget and in my personal sanity this winter. PCNB was, by far, the least expensive solution to snow mold and has been very reliable as well. We are following recommendations from a couple different university research studies, most notably Cornell and the University of Wisconsin and using a combination of 3 different products. According to the research, this combination should provide control as good or better than the PCNB , but I am always nervous when entering into the unknown. I guess we will find out in April.

So far, greens and tees have been treated and it looks like we will have some good weather at the beginning of next week to do fairways and finish cleaning up the leaves.

It has been a tough week in the world of golf course maintenance in Chautauqua County. Although we were very fortunate to avoid the significant accumulation of rain that the eastern part of the state received, the 3 days of rain we did get really put a halt to any routine maintenance.

I sent the entire crew home for 3 days this week to minimize any damage to the course. We were not even able to get around with our 4 wheel drive tractors to take care of some leaves. Even today after 1 1/2 days of no rain we are limited in what we can do. Greens and tees will be mowed this morning and leaf cleanup is taking place, but mowing rough, fairways and chopping leaves would leave the course in worse shape than when we started this morning. We may tackle one course of fairways this afternoon, but that will be a last minute decision.

I would like to have everything mowed for the weekend, which looks to be one of those spectacular October golf weekends that I enjoy so much. The course will be drier and firmer by Saturday and should provide some enjoyable conditions. Enjoy it while you can, snow is only a month away.

Leaves, leaves, leaves!!!

Fall is in full swing here in Chautuauqua County and that means hours daily being spent cleaning leaves off the course. We start off each day blowing off tees and greens then move to the fairways and rough. Once in the rough the leaves get ground up by our mowers and either left as mulch in the grass or, where possible, blown to the wood line to completely remove it from the turf.

October is one of my favorite golf times of the year. The turf is recovering from a tough summer, the leaves are beautiful, and there is a calmness in the air. How could it be better?