Burning Prairie

We were able to burn our no mow areas where we have prairie grass today.  This is the right side of 4 fairway.  The burning rejuvenates the prairie by removing excess leaf litter and duff allowing more plants to flower, produce seed and grow taller.  It also increases available nutrients through indirect stimulation of microbial activity in the soil and releasing nutrients from the ash.  Burning exposes the darkened soil and allows sunlight to warm the soil quicker and extend the growing season for warm season native plants.  The fire also suppresses many weeds and non native invasive cool season grass.  Below is some pictures of the burn.

 Before

 Before

 Karen lighting it up

 Rob is spreading fire

 Now we are cooking

 It was a perfect day very little wind

 Finishing up. That is some very intense heat.

Maple Syrup Time

We Tapped our Maple trees last Friday.  With the warm up sap will be flowing.  It take about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of Maple syrup.   I am optimistic we can get more than enough sap to make a big batch of Maple syrup for a pancake breakfast.

Placing spile into tree

 Installed spile

Big trees can have up to 3 taps.  We use tubing for big tree to condense sap to one bucket 

Smaller trees we hang buckets on spile.

Karen the Pyromaniac

Karen has been busy burning all the grasses throughout the golf course.  Below is shot s of grasses on # 4 tees. The grasses put out some extreme heat.

 Burning helps grasses come back much faster in the spring.

Winter Maintenance

We are in winter mode here at shop.  Lots of thing going on at once.  We have started reconditioning our equipment.  It looks like a tornado has hit the shop.  We have equipment parts everywhere.  We are tearing down our reel mowers and sharpening them on our single blade reel  grinder.  This process get our mowers ready for a long growing season.  This takes almost 2 months to complete.  We have 30 sets of reels and bedknifes to grind.  We also are working on our rotary mowing equipment.  fixing lose and broken parts on the decks. Our tee markers, ball washers, bird houses, are all being reconditioning also.

 Lastec deck being reconditioned

 Reels ready to be ground

 Reel on grinder

 Rob grinding fairway mowing reel

New paint on tee markers