If you drive on the cart path on number one, you are bound to see some turtles all perched on the log in the pond. They sit there. I’ve seen as many as twelve painted turtles hanging out. Stacked on top of each other. When the ponds were dry last year, we asked my dad […]
Smell-a-Site. If Only Computers Had Five Senses.
If you haven’t ever played golf in the spring, you need to make it a point to stop out sometime in the next week or so. The smells and beautiful trees only last a short while, but boy, do they ever smell amazing. As soon as you walk up from the parking lot, you are […]
Weeds. What Are They Good For? Absolutely Nothing.
Spring. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I love to watch the golf course come alive from the depths of winter. Green grass, trees budding with leaves, water running in the creek bed from the winter melt, my brother’s eyes that swell shut from his allergy to Oak trees. It’s all the best part […]
Propping Trees
Last year, we had a severe drought. Our golf course actually ran out of water. It was the first time in our 40 years of business that all of the creek beds that feed our course’s ponds dried up. By the end of the season, we looked pretty rough. In order to keep the greens […]
Turning Lemons into Lemonade
In case you live under a rock or outside of our great state of Iowa, we’ve had a pretty ugly spring. So ugly, in fact, that it actually snowed. In. May. Yeah. Let me tell you that I have no doubt this will definitely be one of those springs you talk about for years. As […]
Insurance Can Be Fun?
Sometimes the hum drum of owning and running a business can be daunting. Like insurance. There are just so. many. options. Luckily, we have an absolutely awesome insurance guy by the name of Brian who owns Donaghy Kempton Insurance. I can’t honestly say enough nice things about the guy. He has taken good care of our […]
Charleston. What a Beautiful City!
As I mentioned here, I have recently been nominated to participate on the National Golf Course Owner Association’s (NGCOA) board of directors. It has been a honor for me, in addition, it has also required me to do a fair amount of traveling this winter. I have spoken at both the Minnesota and Oregon regional […]
TVI, Take 13
Every spring, we host the Toad Valley Invitational. No. It isn’t anything that we sponsor, but rather a bunch of Drake Alumni who come in from all over the United States. They call it Toad Valley Invitational because you have to be invited to know what’s going on. There are usually around 40 friends who […]
Intake Adventures
There is a common catch phrase in the golf industry. It goes something along the lines of cleverly calling irrigation irritation. That’s right. There is nothing that can cause a golf superintendent’s hair to turn gray faster than irrigation. To get things started, we have to get prepared from the winter. In Iowa, we have… […]
Staining. The Story Begins.
As we mentioned in the posts here and here, we have lots of staining projects up our sleeve for the coming year. Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been cooperating for us to get our stain on with these outside projects. That’s when we decided that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! That’s right. We decided […]