Who knows?

The Minnesota State Fair runs for 10 days at the end of August, concluding on Labor Day. Anyone who's lived in Minnesota likely knows this. At the University of Minnesota, turf professor Dr. Don White emphasized that the ideal time to seed is “during the State Fair.” Late summer offers warm soil, cool nights, and lower sun intensity, allowing for more efficient irrigation. Additionally, there’s minimal weed competition, leading to nearly full-cover turf by winter if seeding is done correctly. Wherever you live, you’ll be highly aware of your ideal seeding window and will do everything to try to hit it.

Our five-year-old, Edwin, really enjoys the Australian cartoon Bluey. It’s the perfect combination of entertainment and education wrapped in a package that can delight children and parents alike. During the US Amateur this summer, Edwin suddenly wanted to play a “statue game” with everyone. He would pretend he was a statue but then move when the adult wasn’t looking, leaving the adult incredulous over how the statue had moved. We eventually realized this was from a Bluey episode.

The season three finale—"The Sign"—explores Bluey and her sister Bingo’s emotions as they face moving to a new city. To help with those emotions, Bluey’s teacher shares a pop-up book called “The Farmer” with the class. In the book, a farmer faces a series of seemingly good and bad luck life events. Each brings an overwhelmingly positive or negative reaction from his friends and neighbors. In each case, the farmer says, “Who knows?” and in each case, the result turns out to be the opposite of what was predicted. We can’t predict the future or whether the result will be good or bad. 

Not too long after watching the Bluey episode, I talked with a friend about an article I’d read on an entirely different topic. The message in the article was not to get wrapped up in predicting the future because no one can know how an event today will impact future events. Upon reading the article, the friend sent me a link to the Wikipedia page for “The Old Man Lost His Horse.” it’s the same parable on which “The Farmer” is based in the Bluey episode. 

Our short course construction plan was based on hitting the ideal seeding window and aiming for an opening date in the summer of 2025. However, permitting procedures delayed the project’s beginning by two weeks.

Construction went well, and weather delays were minimal, but it took the time it took, and seeding was 2-3 weeks later than the ideal window. We could either hang our heads and lament that we’d missed the window, predicting the course's opening would be impacted, or get on with what was in front of us.

We got on with it and dropped the first seed on September 15th. Then, no rain fell over the next 40 days, and the temperatures stayed above average. The seed germinated, grew, was fertilized, mowed, and grew more. The course has 75% or better turf cover going into winter. Multiple people told me, “Don’t worry about the basins; they’re going to get f***** up, and you’ll have to return and fix them.

Not one basin got f***** up; everyone looks like this.

As the seeding window came and went, a few people said: “Boy, I wish we had hit that seeding window. What’s going to happen now?”

Like the farmer, I shrugged and said: “Who knows?”

Right after the State Fair, we had our biggest washout event of the entire project. Two days were spent getting the greens mix back to spec. If the project had gone according to plan and we had hit our seeding window, that washout event would have come right after seeding.

We never know when luck might be good or bad or how it might interact with other factors; fate has a funny way of working. It doesn’t mean everything always works out, but when you plan, prepare, and execute–who knows?