Early warm up

We had quite the February when it came to snow.  We were able to open up for golf on January 30th and we closed back down on February 3rd due to snow.  We received very little snow/moisture in December and January and by the end of the month, any snow we did have hanging around was gone.  We were very busy on the open days, over 100 players each day.  We received over 12 inches of snow on February 3rd and I was very excited about it.  We needed the moisture but importantly, the turf needed to be covered up to prevent anymore desiccation from our daily dry wind.

We received over 60 inches of snow in the month and it made our job a little bit more difficult.  Not only did we have a hard time getting access to the course, we also found it difficult just to get into our shop.  It became a huge obstacle with our daily wind, that brought our daily snow drifts.  The picture below is the entrance to our shop.  The drift was over 6 feet tall and over 120 yards long.  We would have to hike in over the drift to get to our shop, fire up the skid loader and it would take about 2 hours to scoop and dump our way through. The problem was once we left for the day, the wind would pick up at night and dump this much snow again the next day.

We started to see a warm up in the weather starting around February 27th.  With the warming and the record amount of snow, I knew we would melt fast and have a bunch of "free water."  I have experienced this in the past and I was ready for it.  Starting on Saturday, I started to snow blow greens in preparation for the melt.  With the warm days and cold nights, I did not want the melted snow to freeze.  It was a mad dash for 4 days but we as a team were able to clear the snow and drifts off the greens.  By Thursday, March 5th all greens were clear.  Time for them to breath.  

Our first golf tournament is 14 days away!!

 10 Green

 16 Green

 8 Green on Tuesday

8 Green on Thursday