Memorial Day in the Golf Business

As an Air Force brat, I've learned and I try to honor all those that served, and today that honor extends to those that paid the ultimate sacrifice.  We thank them for their service.

Every year I make sure I'm working so our flag is set to honor those that made that sacrifice.  I dutiful raise it back to full staff at noon. 

It has never been a day of celebration in our family, early on when dad was in the service, chances were, that if he was home, it was only for the day.  I do remember (well one of them, the other I was 3) he was definitely gone two of them, the first he was stationed in Goose Bay Labrador, (which kind of plays a big part in our being in the golf business).  The second time I do remember him being in Vietnam.  It is possible he missed others, but I'm not sure.  I'm just grateful that he did come home, and was able to retire at a young age after 20 years (couple in the Navy,  the rest in the Air Force.  As today we do honor those that served and did not return. 

After he retired, it still did not become a day of celebration as our whole family found ourselves in the golf business and we were always working on the holiday so others could enjoy the day.  We were fortunate enough to be able to spend time together as a family, since we all worked together at the golf course.  So many great memories over all the years.  Some great stories to tell for another day. 

It started out innocently enough.  Mom and Dad bought a house in Florida before he deployed to Vietnam, just north of Tampa, a place dad really liked from the days of painting runways with his dat at MacDill AFB.  Spring Hill was just getting started and Mom and I moved in as approximately the 125th family in December of 1968.  Spring Hill Country Club opened with 9 holes in the summer of 1969, right as dad arrived back home.  Mom who had held many short order cook positions prior (one at a Woolworth lunch counter in DC), was able to get on as the cook at SHCC.  As the golf course added a second nine, dad was going to Tampa College, the club decided to add weekend dinners for the members.  There were no restaurants at the time in Spring Hill proper, so it was popular, and they would need a bartender on those dinner nights.  Enter dad who had learned to tend bar while stationed in Goose Bay.  As time went by, they decided to make dad the food and beverage manager, (which meant they could pay him salary, where he joked, he was lucky to make minimum wage with all the hours he worked).  He also began working in the pro shop and taking care of the golf cart batteries.  When I was old enough to work, I became a cart boy.  But I always admired the maintenance staff, and the mowing equipment.  After high school I started working on the maintenance crew during summers and part time while attending college.  Eventually when at Florida State I could not pass the audition to get into the music school, (at the time I was wanting to be a band director), It was suggested to attend Lake City Community College and go into the golf maintenance profession since I was always working on the golf course, so why not?  And here I am today.

My favorite piece of equipment back from those days.  It was always my goal to mow fairways with one of these.  It took about 4 years and some of our guys retiring our cutting back to part time for me to finally get to run it. 






Again, I wish to finish by thanking all the family and friends who had someone in their lives make the ultimate sacrifice.  I hope everyone remembers and honors them. 

Thanks for reading. 

Mel

   

Coming Out of Dormancy

As our fairways are finally coming out of dormancy, so should I with this blog.  We did see the greening of our fairways earlier than normal due to the above average temperatures in late winter, but with a more normal April and so far what seems to be a slightly below average May in temperatures, and with a lot of rain and lack of sun, we just didn't see growth in our fairways.  Growth was so slow, that we finally mowed them for the first time this past week.
 
While the blog has been quite since December, we certainly haven't been in regards to getting things done.  It actually has been a pretty busy winter and spring, yet odd as well. 

We did our normal winter projects, such as repairing and painting golf accessory items. But we also stayed busy with above average play through the winter and early spring.  Winter wasn't even really winter it seemed.  We even had our Forsythia budding out the earliest I can remember, (and I know, I record the actual dates every spring, going back to 2012. Forsythia this year was starting to bud on February 13th.  The average time frame is usually in March, typically that second week.

Our normal winter projects of painting our par 3 yardage blocks and repair and painting our ballwashers.  While the paint we used last year for ballwashers was suppose to match our flags last season, out in the sun, they really didn't, so we just looked for a good Royal Blue to paint them with this year.                                                                                                                

     

But the best part of winter was getting to attend the Golf Industry Show (GIS) in Orlando, staged by the Golf Course Superintendent's Association of America (GCSAA), where I had to chance to learn and network, which always seems to recharge the batteries for the season.  I also represented our local chapter the Ozark Turf Association at the Annual Meeting casting our chapter's votes and also filled in casting votes for our friends in the St. Louis area for the Mississippi Valley Golf Course Superintendents Chapter.  It is not every year I get to attend, so thanks to my employer and also my chapter.

 


With the mild weather, we also were able to make many of our applications on time, we were able to clean up the poa out of our Bermuda tees and fairways, get our pre-emergent applications down, and make our fairy ring preventive applications on time.  I was somewhat worried about the timing, with warm temperatures coming so early, March being above normal,  April found itself being closer to normal, which I believe allowed our applications to work, as it appears now anyway.  I still have my fingers crossed as we were the recipients of what seemed endless rains, so there is that worry of products breaking down prematurely, but that gives something to look forward to (or not) as the season progresses.

Truck making our fairway fertilizer/pre-emergent application.  We split out pre-emergent applications on fairways.  We will make a spray in March, and then the truck with the fertilizer and pre-emergent comes in for us in April.  He can load and spread in under an hour.  If we had the spreader to do it, our best timing would be 6 hours times 2 people (loader and operator)  Plus it would take time away from our other applications in our programs. 

It seems that despite the rains, we have been able to keep up with most of our greens programs, be it we might be a week behind with the verticutting and topdressing program.  As for other areas of the course, we seem to be with in sight of our timeframes we set for ourselves to get these projects and applications done.  Items such as fertilizing, seeding, slicing, applying preventive products and even getting in a post herbicide application, we feel the course is doing fine.  

 

Are aeration process above, which this year was done in one day as we raced to finish before heavy rains had hit.  The one thing that we missed due to the weather was our normal fertilizer application on newly aerated greens. 

To the right is one of our verticutting and topdressing runs.  We aim to verticut greens four times before the summer arrives.  The results we see are leaf blades that do not get "fat and happy" so we see better ball roll from the practice.  The greens also have thatch removed before summer so they do not get soft and puffy during the middle of summer. 


This has been a quick attempt to get readers caught up on our busy summer.  Now the goal is to avoid long winded post, and to provide more consistent and item focused posts on a regular basis.  We work hard to prepare a plan and timeframe for our many tasks on the course, this blog should be no different.

I thank you for reading!

Mel