Every fall the course shuts down for 5 days to perform what Apple calls “aggressive agronomic practices.”  This short window of time allows the maintenance team to take that extra step to nurture and care for the greens they have worked hard all year to maintain. They use this time to aerate, top dress and mow down native fescue grasses. Every part of the course will get taken care of from the tees, greens, bank grasses and fairways. Located on steep inclines and sloping terrain, most of the course’s native grass areas only get mowed down a couple times a year and they rely on the Ventrac Tough Cut mower deck and tractor, equipped with dual wheels, to handle the job nicely. The Ventrac Aera-Vator helps out with the aeration process on the rough while core cleanup is easy with the Turbine Blower.  It takes many machines to care for a course this size but they depend on their Ventrac tractors to make the process run like a well-oiled machine.

Watch the video for the full story and see why Ventrac is such an important piece to the puzzle of golf course maintenance. No matter how perfect a golf course, the team at the Pete Dye Course at French Lick always strive for a better one.  Great work guys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef-gtO2LWpE

Ventrac cleaning up a camp with the Vacuum Collection system

Fall is a colorful time of year, but collecting those vibrant leaves isn’t always a pretty job once they hit the ground!  It can be a dreaded job!   Ventrac equipment helped take hours out of the backbreaking, labor-some task of leaf collection at a near-by camp this past weekend.   Volunteers were on hand with two Ventrac tractors to help with the huge job of leaf clean up at Camp Luz,  a Christian camp, near Orrville, Ohio.     “Leaf collection for us has always been a really BIG job,” says  Andrew Michaels, Program Director for Camp Luz.   “In the past it has taken sometimes up to a month to get the leaves collected.”

The job was accomplished in just ONE day as two Ventracs, equipped with vacuum collection systems, buzzed around making quick work out of something that normally took weeks of hand raking and bagging.   Both tractors used the vacuum collection systems to round up the leaves but also switched to the blower attachment to gather any stray debris and leaves in tight areas amongst the trees.

We made a fun, time lapsed video tracking the progress around the camp with before and after shots.    According to Andrew Michaels’  final comment, I would say he was pretty thrilled with the results.  “We’ve been replaced by machines….and it’s amazing!” What an awesome way to let machines do the work.     A huge job was accomplished for Camp Luz with the help of volunteers and some great Ventrac equipment.

Clean up at Camp Luz with the Ventrac and Blower

Ventrac Vacuum Collection System does all the work

See more video, info and photos about the Vacuum Collection System, blower and Ventrac tractors at www.ventrac.com.