Fat Tuesday and Winter Work

Fat Tuesday is February 9.  Time was changed to 6 to 10 PM.  Open to the public.  Contact Tom to make a reservation.

Butch has been busy grinding reels and performing oil changes.

Jose finished up painting the benches, ball washers and garbage cans.

With cooler weather, Jose and I have been cutting down the remaining ash trees.  I should give Jose most of the credit of cutting.  We burn most of the branches and trunk and give away fireplace sized logs.  Let me know if interested.  We'll supply as many members as possible.

A NIPSCO worker took this panoramic view of the course while working on the electrical lines.

Final Round of the Year

 Final round of the year.  The guys kept playing until mid December in 2015.

Jose caught this fish all the way out on #16.  It must have followed a drain line.

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Some of Guy Liptack's Christmas decorations.

Guy all ready for breakfast with Santa.

We've got a beaver on the the big pond.  We have a trapper that should catch him soon.

End of the Golf Season?

Last Saturday, we did our annual irrigation blowout.  We rented a 850 CFM air compressor and hooked it up at the pump house.  Jose first goes to each green and tee and uses a quick coupler key to get most of the water out.

When he gets mostly air coming out I take over and turn on every sprinkler head until we get a fine mist.

This process takes us about 8 hours.  We are a flat golf course which makes the job easier.  On a hilly course, water can pool in low areas which takes extra time.

The last couple of weeks I've been cutting down our wild areas.  If not mowed, weeds, trees and scrub bushes would take over.

One week after the irrigation blowout, we got 6 inches of snow.  It's supposed to warm up this week, so maybe a couple more rounds of golf can be played.

Last week, I was also able to apply our last chemical application to prevent snow mold this winter.  At Lansing, we spray our greens.  Courses with bentgrass tees and fairways also spray those areas.

Halloween Trunk and Treat

The Halloween Trunk and Treat is scheduled for this Friday.  Hayride, Bonfire and plenty of candy for the kids.

Guy Liptack supplied sandwiches, chips, drinks and pie at the ground crew appreciation lunch.  Rich Tabloff and his wife and Mike Ogorek were also invited.  Thanks Guy for your support of the grounds department.

We hired CS Turf again to aerate our greens.  With our small staff and an aerifier that dates back to 1991, this job would have taken a couple of weeks.  Renny and his helper were finished by 11:00 and we were done by 3:00.

After punching the holes, we topdressed with sand, dragged, blew off any excess sand and watered.

It's leaf rule time.  It's a daily job for a couple more weeks.  Free drop if you can't find your ball in a pile of leaves.

Be patient on frost days.  It usually melts off by 9:00 these days.  On these cold mornings the crew will be pulling out flowers and bringing in course accessories.  Just a reminder, this is the last weekend for the range.

Tee Aerification

 

We've started tee aerification.  We'll continue as weather permits.  With a small crew, we can only do 2 or 3 tees per day working around leagues and outings.

 

The new flags have finally arrived.  Thank for the donation from Melissa Kerr, The Lock's, and The McCall's.

 

It looks bad, but should only take a week to disappear.  I think some kids got a cart on Saturday during the fireworks.

 

 

This is Jaime, our newest employee.  He comes to Lansing with a landscaping background.  He can be found mowing greens, raking bunkers and weed whipping.

 

 

 

 

Since the fireworks celebration was rained out in late June, we rescheduled

 on September 5th.  The weather was perfect for a great show.

Turn On The Irrigation

 

After 8.4 inches of rain in June, July ended up much drier than normal with only 2.4 inches.  I finally watered fairways last week for the first time.  Cooler temps are coming next week.  The days are getting shorter so we will need to change our start time to 5:30 am.  The crew will like the extra 30 minutes of sleep.

 

This morning before day 1 of the club championship.

 

Blue moon this morning.

 

Juan is an 8 year veteran here at Lansing Country Club.  He can be found mowing greens, tees, fairways and rough along with about anything else we need him to do.

Too Much of a Good Thing

 

Another .9 inches today brought the total since last Sunday to 5.15 inches.  We were able to cut greens and most of the tees today.  Fairways and Rough are getting very long.  It looks like Tuesday will be cool and dry.  Lets hope for continued dry weather.  Not carts for the near future.

 

Guy Liptack is almost finished getting us up to code with a new railing in the shop.  Thanks for your time and effort on this project.

 

Mike Ogorek has been catching catfish this past week.

 

In about a month, we should start seeing tomatoes for use by Chef Dan.

 

It's almost over.  This is looks like some new turf disease but is actually cotton.  I'm guessing there about 100 cottonwood trees in the ditch line.  These trees release cotton for about a month this time of year.

 

Not only are many people allergic, but the cotton sticks to machines and clogs up radiators that can cause them to overheat.  Its nearly impossible to get a nice even cut under these conditions.