Another 2.5″ rain last night. That makes almost 4″ of rain for the week. Enough is enough. Instead of mowing the course like I had planned on today my staff worked on cleaning and edging drains, more debris cleanup and the clubhouse grounds. I’ve mowed the course once in almost 4 weeks.
We were able to clear out some more trees that needed to be removed. I bought a grapple attachment for our wheel loader to be able to pickup giant chunks of material in one shot. The grapple has saved countless amounts of time by not having to pick stuff up by hand. Here I have an entire tree being carried to the parking lot to be hauled off.
Next week we should finish up with the cleanup on the front nine on Tuesday and move to the back nine where it’s really bad. There still is a lot of trees to be cut back or cut down on holes 10-18. In a lot of areas we just cut what was laying across the cart paths and pushed everything to the sides to get the material off the grass.
Today was all about tree structural cleanup. This time from the top down. I rented a 40 foot lift to be able to get up into the tops of the trees to remove dangerous and dead hanging branches.
In the picture above you can see the split in the branch caused by the heavy winds from Irma. The branch was dying and eventually would create a safety hazard so it’s important that I get them out now.
Here’s a profile picture of the branch after I cut it off. You can really see how deep the split went. Unfortunately for this tree this branch was the main portion of the top canopy. Therefore the entire canopy had to be cut back to balance the tree’s top. All the trees showing signs of dying or dead branches will be investigated, trimmed or cut down completely. Today I was able to complete the tree trimming from the bucket lift on 5 holes on the front. Unfortunately for my staff, those 5 holes produced a massive amount of material to cleanup.
There is so much debris cleanup going on that the golf course is still in rough shape. I am mowing greens once every three days and the rest of the course has only been mowed once in the last 3.5 weeks. Besides all the cleanup to do, every bunker is washed out and requires extensive repair. None of which has even been started. Additionally, my team still needs to do the things we were supposed to be doing this week like aerification and sanding.
I know everyone wants to get back on the course and I appreciate your patience. The course right now is still crazy busy with cleanup efforts. I have so many machines and chainsaws zooming around the course, the property is pretty congested. There are a lot of dangerous scenarios playing out everywhere with trees being dropped, machines hauling loads of logs, and snapped off branches hung up in trees to name a few. Plus, the majority of the clubhouse parking lots is being used to stage all of debris that needs to hauled off. For every day you give me now with the course closed, it will save 4-5 days on the back end when we are open if I had to try and do the same cleanup efforts and have golfers on the course. Not having to worry about mowing grass and changing cups is really speeding up the recovery process.
Since we finished up with the primary debris cleanup on Monday morning we have traded the chainsaws and rakes for as many mowers as we could send out to the course. Everything had to be double and triple cut to chew off all of the excessive growth. The short term reprieve from cleanup didn’t last long, tomorrow we trade back.
Pre-Irma & Post-Irma chainsaws
I’ve gotten a lot of questions on how many trees and how big of a tree we lost. On how many, 100’s if not nearly 1000….counting all the preserves on the back. On how big, see above. That big boy saw isn’t something you typically see around here, maybe in the Pacific Northwest. It’s more like the little guy next to it. Just the cutting bar alone on the big chainsaw is over three feet. But when you have to deal with the trees that fell over and have roots like the next picture you have to go big.
Today the 40 foot boom lift got here. Removing all of the broken limbs still hanging in the trees and cutting them back where they are torn apart on top will be a primary focus for the next couple weeks. They don’t call those hanging branches “Widow Makers” for nothing.
Today the chipper crew finished the primary debris cleanup for holes 1-18. I wasn’t anticipating being done until Wednesday morning, but the staff worked their tails off and pulled through huge.
Almost 100 hrs use in 10 days The beast gets a bath before being serviced
Over the course of the last 10 days or so my team put in nearly 100 hours on the chipper. I’m super proud of the effort everyone gave to get this monumental feat done so quickly. We still have a lot to cleanup, but for the most part the course is cleared. Now we can begin to diversify the focus a bit more instead of just turning wood into mulch.
One of the major hurdles is cleaning up all of the leaf litter from the trees. The leaves in some areas were 6 to 8 inches thick. I am using turf vacuums to be able to clean up all of the extra debris faster, and not just relying on blowing the leaf litter into a native areas.
Now that the debris is gone and a lot of the leaves are cleaned up, we can begin to mow down the grass that has been accumulating since the storm. This will be a time-consuming process because we have to double and triple cut everything in order to bring it back down to the appropriate height. As a side note…in this picture you can see the paspalum target greens really standing out on the driving range.
There’s gonna be some extra hazards on the golf course for a while. All of the trees that blew over are now staked up to prevent them from falling while the root system reestablishes. It’s going to be several months before the stakes can be removed.
One of the unexpected things that we now have to contend with is all of the rutts the utility trucks made on the golf course. It seems that they took much more liberty driving wherever they wanted than what was given to them when they were reestablishing services for the homeowners. My team will be out over the next several days repairing the playing surfaces.
The pile of debris in the clubhouse parking lot seems to be growing exponentially as we use it as a staging area for the things that will need to be hauled off. I spoke to the contractor that will be disposing of all the horticultural waste and hopefully Wednesday or Thursday will begin hauling the materials away.
Lastly I would just like to say thank you to everyone for the wonderful, positive comments on the blog. I do share the comments with the staff to keep them motivated and let them know how much the membership appreciates their efforts.
As fast as I can cut the tops out of the trees, the standup crew is right behind me propping up the new “South Florida Cactus.” I brought in an arborist on Tuesday to review all of the trees and this is what he said to do in order to give them the best chance of survival. Removing all of the foliage and cutting them back you does two things….first, it removes all of the wind resistance and weight off of the top so the tree doesn’t topple over again. Second, it reduces the amount of water that the tree transpires to help the damaged root system.
And as fast as I can cut the tops out of the trees my chipper crew is chucking the limbs into the club’s behemoth chipper as well. And to think I almost got rid of the chipper because we haven’t really used it over 10 yrs…..sometimes procrastination isn’t so bad I guess.
We are back to mowing fairways again. They are a little fury but nothing a good circle cutting can’t cure. My team won’t be mowing roughs for another 3-4 days as we finish cleaning up the leaf litter, but most of the short grass is cleared and mowed now.
Holes 1-7 and 10-18 have primary debris cleanup done. Next week we should wrap up the cleanup on the grass and hopefully start picking up piles of Mulch and logs, then into the natural areas.
Today the club got power back. I also gave the utility trucks access to the golf course to speed up the process for the neighborhood.
In true Murphy’s Law fashion, at the end of the day today it monsooned while the trucks were still on the course. There’s no getting around it, there will be some ruts to repair in the morning. No good deed goes unpunished I guess. Although it will go unnoticed, I hope the homeowners appreciate it.
Can tell you how many trees like this I have cut down in the last week. 140+ mph winds were merciless and some trees just snapped.
The chipper crew finished 1-4 and half of 5 today. My team is really getting through the debris as the front is not nearly as bad as the back. More good news is Trevor is going to mow fairways tomorrow for the first time in 10 days.
My chipper team pushed hard the last 6 days and were able to finish the primary debris cleanup on the back nine today, a day ahead of schedule. On our way by the Foundation Cafe we took down the black olive in the corner of the seating area due to damage. Afterward chipping up the tree I left a reminder in the stump of our adventures.
Today the Chipper team cleaned the right side of 1 by the range hedge, all of 2 and are about to start up the cart path on 1. The tree standing crew is clicking right along and have approximately 25 trees stood back upright. Trevor was able to get a couple turf vacuums going to clean the heavy leaf litter and we even managed to mow greens, tees, collars and approaches. By Friday we will be mowing fairways.
Not nearly as much as my guys can run through a chipper in a day! These chip piles are everywhere now. The remnants of the debris that used to plague the course.
What we couldn’t chip, my horticultural waste guy is picking up with a grapple attachment and putting in the parking lot to haul off.
Today we finished 11 & 12 and will wrap up the last half of 13 tomorrow before lunch to complete the primary debris cleanup on the back nine.
Me and my team of chip-mates made great progress today cleaning off more debris. We finished 10 and got half of 11 done. That might not seem like a lot, but let tell you…11 is really, really, really bad. Trevor and his team got a bunch more trees stood back up and braced as well. The goal is to be on the front 9 by Thursday.
A big shout out to the entire Country Club of Naples team, everybody is helping to do something. Whether it’s making sure everybody has water or making sure everybody’s feed, even if they’re not in my department everybody is helping in the cleanup effort in some form or fashion.
