Snowpocalypse Clean Up

Yes, we are still closed as we are still covered in snow.  This is unfortunate for those that are itching to play golf but a blessing for me since we simply are not ready to have golfers out there yet.  There is still way too many widow makers hanging in the trees.  Tomorrow we have two additional climbers like the one you see here in this picture, so we should have at least 4 going at it.  There is dozens of trees that still need to be pruned by these climbers so I would think by Friday we will have most of the big stuff addressed.  It's also a blessing that we're closed since that has allowed me to focus all of our labor on nothing but clean up.  With full force on clean up we have made significant progress in the last couple days.  In this picture you see some of the crew chipping branches.  Interestingly, this chipper we purchased last year and to my knowledge it is the first chipper the Club has ever owned.  So this is the first storm we've had since owning it and in the first two days I would say it has already payed for itself.  We love our chipper.

The machine is pretty heavy so we cant drive it everywhere.  We pretty much need to keep it on the road so we must bring the branches to the chipper.  That's alright since we need to pick up every branch anyway.  The beauty of the chipper is now we don't have take every branch to the central dump site.  We simply take every branch to the nearest road and pile them for chipping.  This saves a lot of time.

We had at least 8 people today doing nothing but running chain saws, breaking down the big stuff into manageable pieces.  Now that you see people in the pictures with these trees, it gives you the perspective of just how big these old oaks are.  These pictures are of the tree near 16 tee as they cut it up today.

This next picture is of the tree behind 6 green.  I'm telling you this is a big old oak tree.

Some of the crew were hauling the big wood size stuff today to our staging area by the tennis court.  Surprisingly that was hauled away by people for firewood as fast as we were bringing it. 

 So I have to say I think right now it is going pretty well which is evident in this next picture which shows that we already have the tree on 10 fairway picked up.

This picture also clearly shows how much snow is on the property today.  So it's no wonder why we are closed but as I'm typing I can hear the warm pouring rain outside so it may be soon that we see golfers again on the property. 

 Before the ice storm hit, I took this picture of a snowman on 12 tee.

I don't know the craftsman responsible for making this frosty guy but I took the picture because I thought it was hands down the best one I've ever seen.  He had perfect rock eyes, buttons on his chest, a carrot nose, and nice fir bow hair.  

Here he is today.  

I think we'll be opening soon!!!