The beat goes on at Nemadji with never a dull moment on the golf course. Despite the non-existent spring this year we were able to get a pretty good seed catch on the new tee on 9N. The pictures below were taken less than a month after the seeding date of 5-26-2023:
9N Tee 6-24-2023
9N Tee 6-24-2023
Turns out that seeding really worked out quite well for this project as the use of prohibitively expensive sod would have been horribly difficult to keep enough water on during the excessively dry June that we had. With the proper know how, seeding new turf areas is really the only way to go. The only downside of having such a good seed catch is that some players just have to “be that guy” and hit from a tee which is clearly labelled as not open yet.
9N tee 6-24-2023 Divots from players who cannot read
We now mow the tee with our regular tee mowers and hope to have the tee open for play on August 1. We still need a few weeks of solid growth to build the tee’s resistance to wear. The tee has been so much fun to build that we are now currently in the process of building an additional tee on 9E.
This is the replacement tee for the Enbridge dig-destroyed old tiny black tee for 9E. This new tee will likely be 5 to 6 times larger and much more useful than the old tee. Can possibly be utilized as a double tee for 18W as well. We also took the opportunity while Enbridge had their big work machines here to have them remove the old tetanus shelter that was there. Work on this is in the shaping stage but our goal is to have it seeded by August 11 and hopefully open for play sometime in 2024.
9E Tee in Progress 7-5-2023
No Nemadji summertime newsletter would be complete without a leak of the month mention this time on the mainline from the pumpstation to the west golf course. When golf course watering demands are high, I often come into the golf course at night to make sure stuff is kind of working. Last Saturday night when I came in to water, I found that the West course system had shut down due to low pressure. This is indicative of a large leak and so after charging up the system I found said leak:
18W Mainline Failure 7-8-2023 8 pm
This “waterbed” was about a third the size of our shop and about 2’-3’ high. Nasty. I promptly shut the system down, stuck my arm into the most washed-out area, and found the leak 3’ underground while it was still fresh, and marked it. The next Sunday morning I dug the leak up and found the following:
Dug Up Leak 18W 7-9-2023 11 am
At this point, water seeping into the low lying area made making an immediate repair difficult-especially on a Sunday at about 90 degrees. I decided to let the area dry and tackle it the next day. Rain Sunday night removed much of the urgency of making a hasty repair. The next day I continued my work by draining the remaining water and cutting out the damaged area.
3’ Long Split of Previous Repair 7-9-2023
This line had been repaired previously as shown by the repair fittings but over time finally let loose and split along a line about 3’ long. This is one of the more nasty, messy leaks we have encountered on this property but all of them suck. Anyway, with the assistance of Dave Drabek and Dustin Kern, we were able to make the repair shown below and now have it backfilled and ready for powerup this evening just in time to get some water down on some dry West greens. I used some higher strength parts for this repair so hopefully it endures for a few more years until we can upgrade this system.
Final Repair 7-11-2023
We will continue to have these sorts of labor gobbling, expense generating, water wasting, stress inducing, and turf damaging issues as long as this system is used at Nemadji. The inherent problem is one of design-these lines are simply too small to handle the volume of water being forced through them to get enough water down on the golf course during dry conditions. Add to this the poor workmanship during the initial construction and the age of the system and you can easily understand how these problems are just going to grow more and more prevalent. This is not a sustainable situation-much like the situation with our neighbors to the north.
On a final, happy note, while weeding ornamental beds in front of the clubhouse a crew member noticed these caterpillars eating the milkweed plants that we have intentionally left in the area:
Milkweed Clubhouse with Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar 7-12-2023
These are indeed Monarch Butterfly Caterpillars that are eating the leaves of the milkweed plants in order to grow big and strong and ultimately turn into Monarchs to continue their 3000-mile migration journey. These caterpillars will head south to Mexico as soon as they make the change. Nice to see some success with our efforts to help these guys out.
7-12-2023 Nemadji Clubhouse
See you on the golf course,
Vince
