Welcome to work

Welcome to the Wildflower Golf Course Maintenance facility.  I wish I could have had a GoPro video Camera of me crawling into the shop this morning before this path was shoveled, probably would have gotten some laughs at 23 below zero this morning...  To say we have some drifts around the shop and pro shop is an understatement.  According to the Minnesota climatology website we're only in the 60th percentile for snow depth rankings according to the historical data, but the amount of drifting snow and where it rests is quite inconvenient.  Last year, we weren't even close to the amount of drifted snow around the shop as we are currently sitting, and it's not even February yet!

 Our snow fencing attempt proved beneficial this year as we currently have around 4 ft of snow on most of the greens that we fenced.  We strategically placed 2 rows of fence on 7 of our greens to try and keep some snow cover on them.  Most of the snow fence is ripped to shreds by now because of the high winds, but it has served it's purpose for us this winter.  Winter desiccation is a big problem in areas that are wind swept, and Wildflower is no exception.  Currently, there is a large area in front of the bunkers on 9 that is very open.  This is something that we will have to address next year and we will see how the turf comes out of this extremely harsh winter. 

This is a view from my office looking over at where the pro shop should be...  My estimates is that this drift is well over 10 feet, and I think it would be safe to say it's in the 10 to 15 foot range.

 

 

 

Here is another good picture taken this morning showing the size of this drift. It's safe to say, I'm going to let mother nature take care of this one for a while.

 

 

I'm still working in the shop for the next month.  There has been plenty of progress on machinery and getting close to spending all of my time in February grinding out reels.  A quick count reveals 52 reels in need of attention, not counting our newest addition of the Jacobsen 550LF fairway mower that we purchased at the end of the season.

      I'll keep you updated as to how the grinding is coming along in my next post!  Keep warm and get excited, no matter what all the commenter's say on the weather websites, spring will be here.  I just may need to build an ark for when the maintenance shop starts to flood.