It is hard to believe that we are quickly approaching the end of this amazing 100th season. Now that all the tournaments and parties are behind us we can enjoy our beautiful golf course turn from green to red, orange, yellow and all the colors that Fall dishes out. When I look back on where this season started for myself, Nick “Chiach” Ciaccio, and Dylan “Skywalker” Coyne its a very cold day in February, February 9th to be exact and we started with tree work up around the clubhouse. Although tree work had begun last November by an outside contractor the rain and soft conditions shut us down until the ground froze. With Skywalker in the lift and me and Chiach on the ground we slowly made our we through all the oaks around the club and in the parking lot. March was cold and little snow gave us frozen turf and more tree work. With as much as we could do outside we headed inside. While the lads twisted wrenches I managed to put together a couple of projects in the clubhouse. As we headed into April, and the tree work nearly completed’ it was time to turn our focus to winter clean-up and topsoil and seed in areas of tree removal. April weather was a roller coaster but we still managed to get greens aerified, the golf course cleaned-up and the crew busted hump by hauling and spreading 10 loads of Gernatts finest topsoil. No sooner had the last load of topsoil been spread the first week of May it was time to turn around and start hauling sand. All said and done 350 tons of sand was hauled and placed in all the bunkers. If you recall this past spring we went from cold wet and snowy to hot and dry in May and time to fire up the irrigation system. Once pressurized we discovered a number decoder failures from over the winter so Chiach quickly went to work in replacing six of them through out the golf course and we were ready to throw water. May 11th was our first irrigation cycle of 190k gallons and on Thursday morning May 12th is when we discovered our intake at the creek was completely blocked and time for Skywalker and Chiach to get in the Cattaragus. After getting tied off on the shore the lads proceeded to poke and find the end of the pipe, clear as much as they could and buy us two weeks before we could get a contractor in to clear a large area in front of the intake. Strong work lads. We knew going into this season that our plate was full and expectations high and as I write this we still have a two projects before the end of our centennial season. A huge thankyou to all our members who kept this crew fed this season through your very generous breakfast and lunch contributions. To all our members through your maintenance year to date you’ve used up eight and half tons of divot mix. Have a wonderful Fall, GO BILLIS!!!
