Winter? January Thaw

It is very common this time of year to have a warm spell. It is typically called a January thaw, but if you are not frozen what do you call it? I actually played golf this weekend as the temperatures were just too tempting. Of course I went out behind a certain group of daily players and after taking forever to play four holes decided it would be more fun to walk the beach than wait on every single shot in January. The high for Sunday was 55 on our weather station with very little sun and Monday off-island it was 58 and sunny. Chris and I went off to have the truck serviced and to purchase and pickup our new chipper. We will put that to good use this week with our woods clearing project and for many years to come.

New chipper At Grant's Rental Bridgewater, MA

Chris had his first exposure to a greens roller last week. We rolled the new tees to help smooth them out. A good aerifying and topdressing will help in that vain also but they need to put some deeper roots down before we can get that aggressive.

new forward tee on 2 being rolled

After a brief training (safety video supplied and review of the operator's manual) session on the new chipper we continued on our pit expansion on 6 with some tree removal. The area is certainly taking shape with 6-10 trees removed. The oak will be used as firewood and anything 10" or above in pine will be used by a saw miller for lumber. He is actually cutting for a post and beam house being built right now so anxious for anything we can give him. Today's storm was all rain out here so we hunkered down and tried to get caught up on some paperwork for me and mechanical work for Will. Chris helped me a bit and organized the irrigation area. He attempted to brush cut the woods more but it was too sloppy with .5" over the weekend on top of the .5" last night. We will jump back into it tomorrow to wrap up the tree felling so we can expose the ground and start stock piling top soil.

Matt (me) with a saw and our other equipment

more of the pit expansion in progress

different angle of enlarged pit

A short video of the new chipper in action. I have had a heck of time with the blog software lately when it comes to uploading pictures. Movies simply stopped being possible a year ago. I downloaded the google + app to my phone and was able to get the pictures and this movie uploaded to the blog directly. Just when you get into a groove using software they change something and make you buy/download/install or learn something else. I guess that is progress...