Mud. Rain. Muscles.

Since we are beginning to offer a Tuesday Night Burger Buffet, we thought we needed to amp up the play area around the minigolf, so families could have more fun.  What better way to accomplish this task, then to build a playset.  Before we could put the playset together, we had to prep a space for it.  This required a fair amount of organizing because we needed to get several boys together to help cut the sod and prepare the space.  We scheduled everyone to come on Thursday.  It had rained every day that week, but we took a peek at Thursday and it was looking pretty good.  Once we woke up that morning, the radar was telling a different story.  It was looking like we’d have about 3 hours to get a pretty big project done.

Jason got us started by cutting the sod near the miniature golf course to prepare a bed for our playset.

Once he had all of the sod cut, the boys rolled the sod up, so we could move it to some areas of the golf course that desperately needed some new grass.

We had a pretty big crew on hand, so we were hoping we could make our deadline before the rain came.

They rolled and cut sod until the 20×25 foot area was free from sod.  They cut the rows of sod into more manageable sections that could easily be carried.

It was very saturated with water, so it was pretty heavy.  We found many earthworms.

The rolls of sod got loaded onto the cushman and another work cart, so we could transport them to the areas that needed some extra sod help.

The first spot was near the minigolf entrance.  In last year’s drought, the grass had died out.  We have reseeded several times this spring, however, the seed was constantly getting carried away by the rain.  Yes.  We did find this all very ironic.

The ground was very saturated which really worked quite well for sodding purposes.  Here’s Jake laying some of his finely rolled sod.

It didn’t take long before the whole area looked like this!

After that area had been patched up, they boys headed over to the practice green area to lay the rest of the sod.  The first area was by the practice green.  This area had been torn up last year in preparation for our new ceremony site.

Our outside crew have a lot of fun together.  We were feeling a little pressure as the rain was knocking on the door, but the boys continued to press on!

Once that area had been filled in, they also laid some sod near the cart path by the practice green.  This damage was also caused from the dredging of the pond last year in preparation for our ceremony site.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Jason was busy preparing the playset area by digging up some dirt to level the site and give the foundation a deeper base in order to put down wood chips.

He scraped and dug at the play area.

Jason was the main man on the skid loader today because dad decided he needed some time off, so he had his gall bladder removed.  Seriously.  Some people will do just about anything to get out of work.

It was a pretty tight spot and we didn’t want to make too big of a mess because it was wet and pretty muddy.

By the time he was done, things were looking pretty good.

The final parts of the digging out the space required some hand work.

We also had to be careful around a drainage area that pumps water off of the minigolf holes.

After about two hours, the space was looking like a pretty big bed for a playset.

In our constant  quest to kill multiple birds with one stone, we got to work hauling that dirt to a project that we will work on later this year.  The dirt was hauled up to the championship tee on number thirteen.  We are planning to build up that tee since it is smaller than a postage stamp.  Niko drove the dirt up the “no mow” area behind number thirteen championship tee.

We gathered enough dirt that we should be set for the number thirteen project once we get to it.  It is pretty low on the list at this time.

It was about this time that the rain began to fall.  Our boys pressed on.

They cut some more sod to make the flower bed along the seating area a little bit bigger and in better proportion.

The sod cutter makes the job so much easier.

The entire bed had its sod cut, it had been dug down and leveled and now required some woodchips.  The rain wasn’t coming down too heavily, so they decided to finish the project in the rain because another day would have resulted in nothing, but a lot of mud.

They were still smiling and having fun.  It’s really all in how you look at it.  We even had some minigolfers who decided to ignore the bad weather.

They spread the mulch and filled in the area.

By this time, Jake was regretting his decision to say yes to this project.

All of the woodchips were smoothed out.

It was time to call it a day!

What a huge day of work.  We were all so very grateful for their willingness to put in a big day of work.  They got all of this done in under three hours!  Pretty impressive.

How about you?  Have you decided to just work in the rain this spring?