What do you do in the winter?

My kid's pediatrician asked me the other day, "What do you do in the winter at the golf course?"  Kind of caught me off guard with the question, just because I wasn't expecting to talk turf while taking my kid to the doctor.  The answer slid out after a moment of brief hesitation.  But then I started thinking how much I get asked this question come Fall, in different forms.  "Y'all staying busy out there?", "Too cold to be working today right?"' "What are y'all doing today?", "There can't be much to do over there in the Winter?" and many other forms of the same question.
Well, it's the week of Thanksgiving and I'm currently on vacation with my family at the beach and I still can't stop working.  I am taking a break from creating my budget for 2015 right now.  That is one of my big tasks for the month of November.  This also involves the process of early ordering chemicals for 2015, which means that I have to have an agronomic plan in place for 2015 by this point.  I'm not going to go too deep into what I, personally, have to get done. 
I will come up with ideas of things that I would like to change all year long.  Hopefully when I have that idea I have my trusty voice recorder with me so I can make a "note to self" and remind myself later.  Some of the things that we work on are carry over jobs that are just too big for our staff to complete in one season.  We also have repeat jobs that we have to do the same at a certain time every winter. 
I will try to outline the jobs that we will be doing this season excluding keeping up the golf course, which does not stop getting done,

Single Season Jobs
tree work
debris removal
opening up the traffic areas on #6
building new tees on #11 and #17
converting the monument Tee signs into flush in ground tee signs
fixing the maintenance shop ceiling
cut back the bradford pears in the parking lots
relocate and identify the correct teeing areas from the score card
adding new heat to pump station

Carry over jobs
clearing out the riverbank on #8, 16, 17, 18
rebuilding bunkers
repair poor sections of cart path

Repeat jobs
spray roundup and pre emergent on entire course 
repaint all tee markers on course
repaint all hazard markers on course
repaint all OB stakes on course
leaf removal in late fall/early winter
re seal wood products out on course benches, cooler stands, trash cans
reorganize the maintenance yard area
clean out and re insulate bird houses huts and nesting areas
working on repairing faulty wiring in the irrigation system
repainting the pump station

I know that I am missing a few in there but even with the amount of repeat jobs we have a lot to accomplish in an off season with a limited staff, not to mention working on the interior of the club house when it needs attention.  And I know that I will come up with more stuff that I want to complete because I do suffer from my eyes being bigger than my stomach frequently.
With all of that said, that's what we will be doing this winter.

A Great Project

I hope many of you notice the projects that we take on to try to enhance the wildlife here at the golf course.  We are not the only golf course that takes on these projects.  In all honesty, I see a lot of projects that other courses or organizations are doing and try to duplicate projects that are on our scale.  Items like: Purple Martin Houses, Wood Duck Houses, Bluebird Houses, Suet Cages, Mallard Hen Nesting Huts, Bat Houses are some of the small projects that we have taken on here
There has been a very neat project going on for a while now at another course in East Tennessee, Harrison Bay.  Superintendent Paul Carter has a Bald Eagle nesting program.  The program is to show the nesting patterns of the Bald Eagle.  That on its own sounds like a great program.  The Program is to SHOW the nesting patterns.  So, Naturally they installed a webcam at the nest and have a live feed on u-stream the link is provided below for anyone who is interested in viewing the nest.  Oh Yea, they just hatched two baby eagles.
Click here to view the Bald Eagle Cam at Harrison Bay
I wish that we could take on some projects such as this one but unfortunately we are not there yet.  But at least there are people out there that are trying to do great things such as this.

Aububon Projects

We have been working on some Audubon International related projects here lately. When the weather gets bad, and we have a chance to work inside, we have been making Wood Duck houses. As of today we have 5 of them out on the course. Two of them on #7 pond, two of them on #18 pond and one on #12 pond.

They were built at virtually no cost of materials. We got the plans from an online source. We got the lumber from my family farm, where we cut fallen trees for reuse in our saw mill. We went to a local metal recycling place and found some old 1.5" X 12' fence posts for $1.83 each. The mounting brackets cost $0.50 each at the local box store. I have some installation pictures below.

If you or someone you know would be interested in a project of this nature, please don't hesitate to give me a call. I'll be happy to help.

This is the finished product on #12 pond.

Here we have Neil and Spencer trying not to fall out of the boat while mounting this Wood Duck house.


This is the mounting pole going into the pond on #12. There is A LOT of rock in the bottom of this pond we found out. It took a while to find a place where they could drive the posts into the pond floor.