Barry back to work

It's been tough for Barry so far. He is always looking for something to do. So far all we could give him was tea making duty, which of course he carried out superbly and even managed to convince Christa to drink a cuppa on Friday.

I could tell his patience was running out but managed to persuade him to quickly come to a local shop to help me. Leaving Angie at home, yet again, we all set off and his eyes lit up as we drove in to the Erkheim agricultural merchants; tractors, equipment & tools as far as the eye could see. Even managed to find a packet of the lamb feeding bottle spare teets and so Kate was happy - wouldn't it be great if all wives were over the moon when they bought something for around 75 cents.

Back home, Barry climbed up the ladder on to the house roof, adjusted a couple of tiles that had slipped out, then on the tractor down the horse field to the stream and with chainsaw and ropes, pulled out a tall, double tree that had fallen down over the stream. Luckily Jürgen had done a service on the chainsaw and returned it last week having also sharpened the chain - was like cutting butter with a red hot knife. Barry then dragged the trees up to the house, debranched them and cut the trunk in to 2meter lengths. If I had let him, he would have gone further and got the log splitter out and made us a heap of oven ready wood (but for the drying).

Managed to persuade him to take a dip with Elliot who was testing out his new treasure hunting equipment. His first snorkel but he knew exactly what to do and was swimming around, face underwater for minutes. Very lucky to have had a bit of sun on the last full day of the visit.

Then in the early evening, Barry, Angie & I set off to the Ottobeuren Golf Club to meet Jürgen. I had not realised that starting Thursday, the club is celebrating it's 30th birthday with tournaments on three days and an open day on Sunday. With the weird weather of the last few days, they had their work cut out to get the course looking perfect. Despite this and it now being 7:00pm, Jürgen and head greenkeeper Reinhold along with his son who is doing an apprenteship at the club, spent a good hour showing us their machines and then a whirlwind tour of some of the tees and greens on two buggies.

They were all in their own world, not sure what language they communicated in, something like Irish-Swabian, words like Rhizoctonia, Fusarium, Ectotrophic Root Infecting Fungi. I did understand Snow Mold even if I didn't know what it was. Lots of nodding, pointing at sacks, machines, grass, sand etc. Slowly got the impression that greenkeeping is more than putting a few horses or sheep out to mow the grass, followed by a good coating of slurry : mowing, verticulating, scarifying, feeding, sanding, rolling, treating - there is apparently a noticeable difference between 4.0mm and 3.5mm tall grass something to do with cutting for speed or looks. Well have to admit the course did look great, the wet weather this summer no doubt helping to keep things green but making maintenance very difficult.

After the hour or so, it was very apparent that all had thoroughly enjoyed the meeting and tour, the exchange of information and ideas. While each has some specific problems, the majority of the tasks are very similar. Barry has a huge area to maintain (3rd largest course in Ireland) but Reinhold & Jürgen have long periods of frost and snow with impatient golfers at their necks as soon as the sun shines and it gets above 0°C.

I am sure this meeting will not be the last especially as Barry very much wants to see Jürgens tractor collection, having himself just restored a Massey Ferguson at home.

Thank you Jürgen and Reinhold for a great evening and hope you didn't get in to too much trouble by the time you got home.

When we got home, MrB called asking why Angie and Kate hadn't collected the key to his elevated hunting hide - they had wanted to do some beaver watching one evening as he had promised them a 99.9% certainty of seeing a family on his patch. Sadly the time ran out, but Barry & I popped over to see MrB's Eicher tractor, Barry trying hard to avoid looking at his Toyota pick up, having recently sold his identical one to buy a "sensible" family van. The pain however was yet to come - MrB's huge mean looking touring KTM. It got worse when he then said on the days he wanted to go a bit quicker he used a different machine and opened up another garage door to reveal his Yamaha FZR 1000. Poor Barry, a motorcycle owner more or less all his driving licence life who had sensibly traded it in for a car when he got married and currently "working" on Kate to allow him to have one again - after all he does need a means of getting to work..........

With a laughing and a crying eye, we said our goodbye from MrB and headed home. Either I slept very well or Barry diplomatically didn't raise the subject with Kate when they went to bed!

Thanks Barry for all your work!