In Essex Junction, VT, the Links at Lang Farm, an executive golf course, recently unveiled its greens. And though the course is designed for a quick 18 holes of golf, players will be tempted to slow down and smell the roses.Construction of the Links at Lang Farm began in September 2000 and the course opened in mid-July. The Links at Lang Farm is an 18-hole executive layout course that plays for 4,100 yds. and covers 85 acres. The course features 12 par-3 holes and six par-4 holes.Throughout the Links, Lang Farm Nursery transplanted large trees, giving the surroundings a remarkably mature appearance that belies the course’s youth.The landscaping truly is a work of art, a bucolic masterpiece. Stand on a green and turn full circle and you’ll be rewarded with a panorama of verdant hills surrounding hundreds of mature maples and pines, which wrap around the course. And if you imagine autumn, you’ll want to play a round or two in October to take in Vermont’s version of the Fourth of July.Essex Junction’s Lang Farm Nursery did both the excavation and landscaping by using a Volvo L30B 1-yd. (.9 m), articulated loader and a Volvo EC55 12,000-lb. (5,443 kg), steel-tracked mini-excavator with a back blade.Using its EC55, Lang Farm Nursery installed approximately 20,000 ft. (6,096 m) of 10-in. (25.4 cm) main line pipe and also installed another 30,000 ft. (9,144 m) of 4- and 6-in. (10.2 and 15.2 cm) pipe.Additionally, Lang Farm purchased an adapter plate for its L30B artic loader, which permitted it to accept all Bobcat skid steer attachments, rendering it very flexible because smaller attachments could be employed. Lang also used the EC55 on digging the footings for two bridges in the course. All of the greens, fairways and tees have been set up for irrigation.At first, Lang Farm opted to rent these machines from Woods CRW, based in Williston, VT. However, Jonathan Lang, president of Lang Farm Nursery and co-owner of the course, found the EC55 and L30B to be very comfortable, and combined with what Steve Kolvoord, co-owner of the Links at Lang Farms, dubbed “creative financing” by Woods CRW, the two ultimately decided to purchase the machines.“These were the machines that we wanted to buy and the price was right. We got great financing through Volvo finance,” said Kolvoord.At Woods CRW, Lang test drove his two Volvos and compared them with competitors’ machines and concluded that the EC55 and L30B “were vastly superior machines.”“The feel, usability and flexibility of the Volvos were superior to anything else that I tried. And the excavator digs like heck. It offers me a tremendous visibility and we have gotten exceptional use out of the back blade,” said Lang, adding that he’s had the Volvos for more than a year and they’ve needed no service other than the standard filters.In the first year of operation, Lang Farm put 1,300 hours on its EC55, running it approximately 70 hours a week throughout the summer and experienced no mechanical failures.“The machines run virtually trouble-free and operate like the day we bought them. Also we are now finding that both machines, but particularly the loader, get a lot of cross uses between the nursery operation and the golf course. In the wintertime, we even use the loader to push an 8-ft. Protech snow pusher for some of our snow removal operations,” Land said.This story also appears on Construction Equipment Guide.
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