Golf Course Update

The golf course maintenance team did an outstanding job, they were coming to work in the dark with no lights, no heat in the shop and no running water.  We had to scramble to get washroom facilities and to get our generators hooked up to power as much as possible. We didn’t know it but we had a generator expert (Jim Dickey) who set us up with as much power as possible. We even had folks bringing in their own generators to help everybody on the crew, I cant say enough about how the crew pulled together and responded to this adversity.

Once we established a semblance of hybrid power, the priority for us was to secure a chipper, as you can imagine these were like gold in central Ontario.  We managed to rent a small chipper, and combined with our own, went right to work. On day one, we couldn’t even park in our parking lot due to all the downed trees. 
The initial clean up began by cleaning up and cutting and chipping all the arteries to get to the actual golf course, this was made even more difficult because most of the back nine was still covered in snow, many areas weeks away from being able to handle the weight of any kind of equipment.  Many areas of the golf course that still need to be accessed for cutting and chipping trees are still far too wet, between melting snow and rain, it will be awhile before we can get to some areas of the back nine. 

All of the areas that we have been able to cleanup thus far have been accessed by pathway only, we wanted to keep damage to the turf to a minimum.  In the process of clean up, we will do damage to our existing cart paths, there is simply no way to avoid this, luckily we will be re surfacing our paths on the back end of our construction/irrigation projects in 2026.

We have been running 2 or 3 chippers for 2 weeks now and we have made some progress.  Most of the areas that have been impacted are tree lined portions of the property which is good for a couple of reasons, this allows us to chip right into the forested areas rather than having to haul away any material.  Also, when clean up is complete, it will be less impactful than stand alone trees due to the forest behind.  Once the deciduous trees leaf out, many areas may not even be noticeable.

We are also fortunate to have one of our contractors onsite with an additional chipper attachment on an excavator, this has been extremely helpful in the harder hit areas where trees were literally snapped like match sticks.    



As we move forward our biggest challenge will be how we navigate all the tree branches that have broken off but are still hanging in the trees.  We have some areas where this is worse than others.  In some instances the entire tree will be removed, while other areas we may just remove affected branches.
We are grateful that other departments have been out there helping us chip trees and branches, it has been great having different departments working together more closely than usual to help achieve a common goal. 

We are also looking forward to having some members out next week to help with some clean up as well.  It is a huge help for us to use resources as efficiently as possible.

Although it may be a bit later than originally anticipated, we look forward to the start of the 2025 golf season, and seeing everyone again soon.

Sincerely,

Chad Vibert
Golf Course Superintendent