The "What do you do during the winter" question...

No matter who I talk to about my job, this question always comes up in the conversation.  What do you do during the winter?  I wish I could say that I sleep in, take long coffee breaks or that I just go skiing.  But in reality, we work very hard in the off season to prepare ourselves for the upcoming season.  Preparation starts the season before when you are taking notes of projects that you want to accomplish, trees that you want to remove, bunkers that need added drainage or equipment that needs to be fixed.  We all takes notes and when the season is wrapping up, we all meet and discuss what we would like to accomplish in the off season.  We write it down on the dry erase board and start crossing tasks off as we complete them. No matter what, there are always a few up-keeps that we need to do every year.  This off season, we had an assortment of small tasks to accomplish instead of a few large projects.

In December, we painted another 1/3 of the shop's interior.  We reorganized the parts on the wall and threw away years of junk. Just another 1/3 left to finish the entire shop and we hoping that another large snow storm will allow for that this winter.

During a little warm spell that melted the snow, we removed all the equipment attachments so we could level the yard. We were able to put the all the bone yard equipment in the corner, which allowed for us to stage the equipment that we use more frequently.  No more moving equipment to get to equipment that we need to use.

We removed the existing PVC range poles from the Driving Range and we custom built our new poles.  No more broken or leaning poles in our range!  The new wood stain will be incorporated in all of our golf course accessories.

It is never ending.  We are always looking at different ways to improve our equipment.  This year, all of our greens mowers have brand new hydraulic hoses installed on them.  I hate hydraulic leaks!  Our sprayer is getting the royal treatment to make sure it starts the season with no leaks or problems.  As always we are going through each bunker rake to make sure they are not broken and we are repainting the tee box indicator stakes.  All the 22 ballwashers were sent off to the shop to get striped/sandblasted/primed and powder coated.

As all of these projects go on, we never forget about the course.  We are always monitoring the moisture in the soil and trying to make sure all the turf is covered in snow.  There are times you will catch us on the course snow blowing a snow drift while 20 feet away, we are watering the turf with our 500 gallon tank.

There is always something to improve on at a golf course!