Brand New Year

I have been away from the property for a bit taking a vacation in Sandwich and spending time with family over the holidays. It is not far from MV but it seems like a world away. We received a bunch of rain but at the end 3-5" of snow. That snow is melting with the current weather but still around and looking like winter. Rhode Island received 10" or so and VT over a foot. The Vineyard was all rain with maybe a dusting that melted. So the grass is green  and with temps in the 40's and 60 predicted for Sunday it is hard to remember it is winter unless you leave the island and get reminded by the snow right in Woods Hole. In my first days back I was able to conduct interviews and hire Chris Welch as our new Foreman. Originally from Cape Cod he has been on island for over 20 years and has been in the heavy equipment industry his entire life. For the last two decades he has been the Bobcat salesman for this area, which is how we met. We are all excited to welcome Chris to the team and start a new year with much enthusiasm.

Will & Chris dealing with lift in clubhouse

Work begins on expanding pit on 6

Chris brush cutting woods 

More brush cutting to clear for tree removal

As I mentioned in previous posts while discussing the construction of new forward tees it would be great to have our own source for fill and topsoil. We have very good soils here so it would help to use our own as well as save money. So after running some errands to get Chris's paperwork squared away we began the week traipsing through the woods searching for old surveyors stakes or rebar we used to mark said stakes. When we re-constucted the tee complexes on 5 & 7 (roughly a decade ago) we had the property lines staked in those areas so as not to build a tee on someone else's land. We own a fair piece of land between those two tees. Our current staging area or pit is there and although we went as far as we could towards 5 tees we have acres of room to go behind 7 tee. So the thought is to put a road in which will create topsoil and also to clear a section to extract fill for the next set of tees and the future. The work to set property lines was not easy as this area has become overgrown with greenbriar. I told Chris everyone's first day should be memorable after a couple hours getting scraped up and searching aimlesly. Once the line was set we began brushcutting that line and also the area we will use for fill.Hopefully we can find a chipper soon so we can begin the tree removal which will be the next step.