The Underground - Building the Winery: Part 7

Sometimes what you don't see can be very important. No, I'm not talking about the septic system which managed to rear its ugly head by having 7 silos pop above ground over the holding tanks. I'm talking about electrical power.

Dominion Power has a program which analyzes neighborhoods, and particularly residences, to determine if there is a high chance of hurricane damage to the elevated power lines that are suspended up on the poles. The theory is that if they provide some preemptive action to these locations, they then can avert a potential electrical outage should a major storm pass through. Our winery / farm location was identified as one of these sources of potential trouble.

So one of their engineers approached me to discuss their program. Nice guy this "Steve" (whose last name will be omitted to protect his identity), who must have had some human resource training along with his years of practical knowledge about power lines. He said all the right things.....like "you won't have any trees taking down your power lines" (there was only one along 800' of line), to "it'll remove an eyesore from your future winery view" to "we can do it all without destroying your lawn".

This has apparently been a program going on for some time. It just shows you that there must be some extra money in the till for them to worry about the future like this. In further discussions with Steve, he shared with me a common attitude that this program allows Dominion Power to be in control of an ever-increasing amount of real estate, for to have them come in and bury power lines, they require a right-of-way that measures some 15' wide for the length of the line. You do this often enough, they tend to become a major land-owner in the State, though technically they don't own the land, but they do control it.

For the most part I didn't have to give up too many rights regarding the parcel sectioned off. Yes, I can still put a fence over the top of it. I just can't put a shed or something that might be considered a permanent structure that might hinder future repairs over the line. But that's the trade-off, isn't it? And let's be honest, where the line is being dropped it wasn't really in a touchy part of the property. It managed to follow along one side of the property line, much like an "Invisible Fence" might.

For those that think a Ditch Witch is just a piece of machinery you rent at Home Depot, you must expand your understanding. Ditch Witch is a company and a brand name that includes all sorts of earth construction equipment. The one that was used on our project was a Model JT2020 Directional Drill (seen above). Using an 85 hp engine, it rotated and push-drilled lengths of pipe, I'm guessing maybe 2 1/2" in diameter x 10' long, into the ground  to a depth of 4'. At the forward end of the lead pipe there was a deflector of sorts that the operator could maneuver back at the control box that would allow it to steer up or down, left or right. With an electronic guidance system that sort of resembles a parking meter, another operator would hold it upright a hundred feet or so away to determine the "flight path" of the underground piping. The guidance system would send radio waves into the ground that the main control panel would pick up on and allow for a directional adjustment.

Once the pipe popped out into a previously dug splicing pit, a roll of wire would be attached and the pipe would then be pulled back into the rig. This particular directional drill machine held 300' of piping that had a pulling power of 20,000 pounds in order to return the pipe to its docking carriage and yank the wire through the 300' cavity.

All in all, it took a crew of four an entire day to perform this task, and nearly a day for a 3-truck Dominion crew to detach the above-ground wires, hook-up the feeds to a new pad transformer , remove the old poles, and  clean up the site.

All did a great job. They barely left a trace other than a picket fence that had to be put back in place; oh, I had to reset all the blinking alarm clocks in the house too.

Sexed Semen: It's time to make babies

Alright, the title of this blog grabbed your attention and now I have to explain myself. The fact is that it is that time of year again when I have to think about adding to the herd, and the best way to do it is by applying artificial insemination to my cows. Nine months later: POOF, I have a calf.

Much like people there is a best time of the month to enter the butt end of a cow and place a sperm sample for insemination. So for the last several days I have been walking among the herd and watching the cow's behavior looking for signs that they are entering their heat cycles and will soon be in standing heat. But there is a lot of prep work in order to get to this point which I'll explain in a minute.

I talk to my 93 year old Father once a week, and when I shared with him my activities during the past week, he asked if I thought about this aspect of farming while I was in engineering school 45 years ago. Who would have guessed; I thought about sex, just not animal sex.

I have registered Red Angus cows and heifers. My business plan is to build up a herd of these cattle and eventually offer cuts of meat from them in a cafe associated with the winery. It will be beef that I had total control over, from birth to slaughter, being grass fed without the use of growth hormones, and that meet or exceed the Beef Quality Assurance guidelines. The small herd I have now are the beginnings of my breeding herd, and I am trying to put together good, solid, and healthy stock that have the best EPD's (Expected Progeny Data) that support this endeavor. EPD's are today's answer to the Big T, little t genetic traits we learned about in high school biology. EPD's may include characteristics such as calving ease, feed efficiency, docile mood, weight to carcass ratio, or marbling. There are 12 traits to consider.   In order to get the ones I want, one has to match a cow with a bull that shares these desired traits. You can always buy a prize bull for $20,000 to $30,000, but unfortunately after just a couple of years this bull can no longer be used in the same herd or it will be jacking its daughters. Also, by using a single bull, there is no guarantee you'll get just daughters.....you might get bulls too.

Which brings into the discussion sexed semen. There are dozens and dozens of prize bulls out on the market, each with their own special EPD data that I can use to match with my cows. And once you identify the best bull for breeding, one can purchase sexed semen that provides maybe an 85% chance of it breeding females . This is an important feature for rapidly expanding one's herd: to constantly bring on more females.

So now that I have found the best semen for the desired traits, and then had it shipped to the Vets for nitrogen storage, the next thing to do is to coordinate all the cows to have similar estrogen cycles. Why is this important? For one thing, I don't want to have all my cows cycling at different times. I don't have 30 days to watch over each of them to understand their heat cycles. Also, my Vet needs adhere to a plan too, without knowing when I would need him to perform A.I. would really mess up his schedule. Hey, how often do you hear about a doctor wanting to stimulate a birth so it doesn't get in the way of his golf game on Saturday? Same thing, but here the Vet is involved in the insemination, not the birth. Lastly, knowing that all the calves are going to be born on or about the same day will allow me to monitor the pregnant cows in late September (after harvest) and if there are any complications I can spot them quickly for corrective action. Just a few days ago on Wednesday my Vet came in and gave the 2 cows a shot to stimulate their estrogen cycle; by each of them getting a shot at the same time they both should come into heat within the next 3 to 5 days.

Which brings us up to current events. Twice a day I have been walking back to our pasture and watching cows. The time for activity is generally the first hour of the day (sun up is 7:10 a.m.) or the last hour of the day (3:50 p.m.). I watch the cows eat. I watch the cows drink. I watch the cows chew their cud. I watch the cows nuzzle each other. And I watch the cows......

That's right, female on female. But that's not the point. The bottom cow is in standing heat (i.e. they stand still while they are ridden by another cow, heifer, steer, or bull) and this is the best time to inject them with the bull semen. Unlike mares where there is a 4 - 5 day window to get this done, with cows we only have 12 hours or we lose our window of opportunity. I gave the Vet a call and we scheduled a rendezvous for the next day, Sunday. There is no rest for the wicked.

There is still frost on the ground when the Vet shows up the next morning. I had already done my mandatory chore of getting the four cattle in the pen adjacent to the sweep pen and the squeeze chute. Our first job was to get the two cows that were to be bred into the chute leading to the squeeze pen, and with just a little prodding we were able to get them headed in the right direction. X406 was the first in line, and she was the one observed the previous night in standing heat. My job was to lock the head into position.....no cow with a hand up its butt will stand still on their own and let the Vet perform his duty. A squeeze pen is a necessity to control a 2000 pound animal.

With a glove on his right hand which extends all the way up to his shoulder, the Vet reached in and felt the inner workings of X406. Everything was in place and sized accordingly. He confirmed she was in heat and proceeded to take a straw of semen and insert it into the uterus for dispersal. Wam. Bang. The job was done in just a few minutes. The Vet's arm must have been warm; the cow never put up a fuss.

Now onto X446. This was the other cow that received an estrogen cycle shot but so far had not shown any signs of heat. That was no excuse however to avoid the tender hand of the Vet. After I opened the head gate and allowed X406 to leave and join the 2 heifers who were eating grass within her view, X446 was prodded into the squeeze chute and I proceeded to close the gate to restrain her. She wasn't happy but she recognized her predicament and took it in stride. The Vet then repeated his prior actions, but this time he was exploring more to see what her inner activity was. He concurred she was well into her cycle, but not quite ready. Tomorrow would be the likely day and I should just be vigilant in my observations in order to spot her in standing heat and be ready for her being artificially inseminated.

This story was certainly more than you bargained for. Ah, life on a farm.

UPDATE: X446 was A.I.'d Monday morning, 5 days after her estrogen shot.

Now the big question is whether we were successful or not. Ultrasound can't be performed for 25 days, but before that time the cows may or may not go into their ordinary heat cycle. If I don't see them perform in 21 days, "we" are good to go. January 4th and 5th will be the telling days. If all is well, the new calves will be warming in the sunshine of mid-September.

Signs - Building the Winery: Part 6

As you can conclude from my previous posts, there is more to building a winery than just throwing up some framing and a roof. There are so many things that one must consider beyond the obvious visible aspects of the building. As the winery gets closer to completion (we are still a long ways away), one has to consider other things. One is just making sure you have enough product to sell (more on that later), but the other is to consider the marketing part of the project. Without people coming to the winery, all is lost.

So I took a careful look at all the signage we will need and then began reading the County statutes that apply to putting up signs. There are nine pages specifically dedicated to signs and how they can be installed within the county limits. Nine pages! Recognizing that nothing is smooth sailing within this County, I started to read through these to see where my particular signs fell within the codes.

The regulations began by talking about how the signs shouldn't interfere with the pleasant rural scheme that has unfolded over the last 300 years. I guess that kind of eliminates huge billboards (think: "400 miles to SOUTH of the BORDER"), which I don't have. Whew !

As you read more and more of these statutes and other regulatory manuscripts, they all tend to have  a phrase like" intended to protect the health,safety, and welfare of the public." If this isn't a catch all, I don't know what is. Almost anything you do will either piss someone off, or at best they might not care. This one little phrase, influenced greatly by someone with a legal sense, allows County administrators to get in your face and try to tell you what to do in every imaginable way. And what better way to make their presence known than to get involved in the approval process of a simple sign. A sign is your entry way into the market. It is a way to say "I'm over here !" It is your defining message. And it is open to government intervention.

How's this for a line in the regulations: "Distribute equitably the privilege of using the public environs to communicate private information." Huh ?

So I plod through the regulations. There are general requirements. I'm OK with these. These things include location, construction,materials, manner of illuminating and/or securing or fastening, and number of signs applied for, and the wording of the sign or advertisement to be carried on the sign. I suppose if you have a "normal" sign, none of this is worth arguing about.

And then there are Prohibited Signs. Wind sail signs (think of those in front of an auto dealership on Presidents Day), flashing signs, signs on a roof, signs attached to vehicles, or those put on an unapproved supporting structure. So far, so good......missed that bullet.

There are exempt signs,traffic signs, No Hunting signs. There is the typical disclaimer that the County does not wish to stifle free speech by limiting political signs. There are on-premise signs, and off-premise signs. There are rules for signs within an Agricultural - Residential District, and an RVC District (whatever that is), a R-1 District (I know this one, it's a level of residential), a B-1 District (i.e. Business) , a B-2 District (which is kinda funny since our downtown has a single traffic light and has maybe a dozen buildings total, but somehow we managed to have 2 levels of Business), an M-1 District as well as a M-2. Really ?

Now in each of these areas the sign is restricted in different ways by how large it can be, where or how it should be mounted, how high it is allowed, whether illumination is permitted , and possibly how long they can be up before they must be removed.

So now having an in depth understanding of how confusing all these rules are that need to be applied  (square footage and an associated height requirement are the most mathematically challenging), I put my sign request together, showing the signs I wanted (3 copies required with each request), descriptions of each sign (materials, fastening, method of support), its location including number of feet from roadways and access points, and description & purpose.

I had four signs, and to be honest once I was in the groove cranking out all this info., it didn't take too long. But to really understand which technical statute they each fell into was beyond me. Was a sign intended to promote the bank a "Construction Sign"? This is one of those temporary signs that state "Another building project financed by ABC Bank" . And then I had a sign to be mounted just outside the building promoting the Winery. It was 500' off the major road and you couldn't see it in a drive buy if you squinted. Why does this need to be approved anyway ? And then there was the sign by our entrance. I sort of knew where this one fell, and fortunately it was sized appropriately. And then there is this sign, being used as a directional sign out by the main road that is a 1/4 mile away from our entrance, so I guess this is a "directional" sign.

So in the end I was able to get them all approved, with no debate I might add. I would like to think it was because of my prep work, but deep down I suspect it might be more because I am one of the few people who actually tried to follow the statutes before I erected a sign. The Planning Director said that about 7 signs come in for approvals annually; my request was over half their quota.

C-Projects: What you do in the off season

I have a personality flaw (or at least one I'll admit to). I tend to work on a gazillion projects, most of which are well publicized, and many take forever to complete. These projects, when started, seem to be very important at the time, but as other jobs come along, these projects slip backwards in priority and some may never seem to get done.

There are several downsides to this. First, because these are apparent to those that are following the building of the winery, or the expansion of the vineyard, I am asked repeatedly how this project or that project is coming along. All I can do is try to defend why it is delayed.....there is only one of me and other things jumped ahead of it. The other downside is that I generally collect all the materials required to complete the job, so some investment has been made waiting for the job to regain momentum. If I start a project, I will have a pile of tools next to it that will stay on "Ready Alert" status until I get back to it. Fortunately I have accumulated seven hammers, five sets of wrenches, numerous boxes of screws and nails, a half dozen tape measures and Sharpies, and easily two dozen various clamps (C-Clamps, F-clamps, pipe clamps, & pony clamps) such that I am seldom looking for that tool I put down somewhere to start a next project.

All this gets me to my list of "C-Projects". Somewhere in my management training I was told to prioritize my to-do list every day. This is very easy to do while in season (March through September); the vines take firm hold of the top items on the list and become A-projects. Of course when the winery needs attention, it has a season that overlaps with the vineyard in August and September, and oftentimes it easily bumps vineyard items, especially if there is manpower available whom I can delegate some of the vineyard tasks to.

A-Projects are required to be done right away. B-Projects need to be done but they aren't in a life or death category. B-Projects delayed can easily jump up to A-Projects instantly. And then there are the C-Projects. These tend to fall within the definition of needing eventually to get done, and their primary level of importance is tied to future improved efficiencies, so to ignore them completely only adds more work later on. A good example of a C-Project is the spraying of weed killer. Not to do it in a timely manner means tall weeds may ground out the electric fence (which leads to cows escaping & hence chasing them around the County), or requiring days upon days of weedwacker work when the weeds get too tall for traditional mowing to handle. Do not ignore C-Projects !

So here I am in the off-season with all these C-Projects. Some of which I'll move along a little, but still not completing them. Others I will review and analyze and possibly change completely how I will conquer them. Still others might fall off the list entirely. Then there are others I prefer to do when it is a little warmer, or when it either is raining (like inside projects) or is not. I am not sure if it is clinically defined ADD or just a desire to keep entertained by jumping around in these assignments. Never the less, the important ones do get done, and others just get completed because I am tired of walking around them.

There is the portable wine lab for Diane. Here is this 8' x 12' lab I am making that is perched up on skids, so when we expand in a few years I can just pick it up with a fork truck and move it to a new location. Diane needs a place to keep all her winery materials, and to remove her testing from our kitchen to a more appropriate place. Our kitchen has piles of lab data, pipettes, alcohol and sulfur and acid analysis equipment, 2 scales, and gallons of distilled water. I think this stuff deserves a home of its own. The lab is almost done except for the finish work, which was halted so I could get some giant-sized plastic bags to put over all the wine tanks and protect them from airborne dust that I would be creating when I finished taping & sanding wallboard joints. The job was delayed, but the bags are now in. It is now firmly a C-Project in hold status.

Then there is the cattle feeder. A welded framework which holds a halved plastic barrel so I can feed the cattle cracked corn or baled hay without it being spread everywhere. Almost done, just need to find the time to finish mounting the barrels.

How about sanding the back porch? After several trips to Lowes to identify the perfect color, and the priming & painting method I wanted to use, the paint sits in our foyer waiting in line for the perfect day to spend on one's hands and knees to prep the porch. How exciting.

The chickens have had some unfortunate experience in being introduced to a neighborhood hawk. One of their sisters took one for the team and became a filling meal for the hawk. The hawk has seen that they are easy pickens because they are truly free range, and spend more time looking down for bugs instead of looking up for incoming danger. I need to do something here or my egg output will drop below usage. Why didn't the hawk grab Fred?

The list goes on and on. A pump house needs to be built and another one repaired. Irrigation systems need to be built or fixed. A hay pavilion should be built. A hoist system for the winery has all the parts in a pile that require a day's worth of installation on high ladders. The Virginia Health Department says we need to set up a closed room specific to our wine bottling operation prior to our February bottling effort. And I am juggling the demands of building the winery and pulling its marketing together, along with completing a research project I am involved in with Virginia Tech.

So much to do, so much to do.

"Love That Dirty Water" - Building the Winery: Part 5

You put the words: "For Public Consumption" in front of any endeavor and automatically someone in the regulatory system recognizes that "whatever goes in must come out". Hence a septic system that resembles a 7 silo rocket launching facility. Unlike private residential septic systems where the homeowner can quietly cover up the access panels with a few inches of dirt and sod, a system such as this requires geo-engineers to design a system that includes three huge concrete tanks and seven manholes (all visible to the tourists we hope to cater to), 2 control panels and multiple pumps, one of which is intended to grind up solids before transport up hundreds of feet of discharge piping to a drain field. I think it is intended for that occasional use by three busloads of retirees, all of whom have "issues" and need the trip to a winery to use their rest rooms. Geez.

Any way, the area in front of the new building was dug out to allow the tanks to be dropped into place. As I mentioned in a prior blog, this needed to be done before the seasonal rains came in. If the backhoe went down and broke through the water table such that water pours in faster than the hoe could remove dirt, then these concrete tanks, as heavy as they are, would begin to float in place, much like an aircraft carrier. Not a great way to place and locate them in position so they could be tied together.

The contractor completed his work in about a week, grading the area around the "silos" as best he could, but recognizing the final grading and landscape work would be done months later. Shy of testing the system (of course, it needed to be tested), he felt he was done. That is until I looked over from a distance and said "No way".  The black silos were almost 2 feet out of the ground; about as ugly as it could be designed. Apparently the engineers that came up with this system didn't consult with an exterior landscape designer or have any understanding of aesthetics. But I'm sure it was operable!

The testing was scheduled for a few days later. So here were all these guys standing around. A couple of electricians to temporarily wire up the controls, another two guys who installed the system(who had a personal interest in getting paid), the G.C. and his son, the system designer, and me. Everyone kinda just stood there looking at each other until I decided I was going to be the first one to ask the first dumb question. Once that got out of the way, questions flew in all directions among these contractors, who up to that point just did their job without understanding the bigger picture of an operating system. I also voiced my displeasure with the height of the 2 black manholes; the contractor quickly got on it and removed 12" from each. The tests then got underway.

Garden hoses were run from my house to fill the concrete tanks. When the power was made available from a portable generator, the pumps were then started. There are two of them: one to grind the solids and another to send the pulverized waste up a slight incline into the discharge field maybe 200' away. The designer had certain specifications he was measuring against, and this was basically the number of gallons that could be moved in a specific time period. If it was too fast or too slow, the controls had to be tweaked for adjustment. If you removed a lid and looked inside of one of these silos, you'd see float valves and even more electronics controlling the movement of  excretions. Even our personal discharge has gone high tech. Ugh. Really, is this necessary ?

But when it was all said and done, regardless of how efficient the process is or the value it silently adds to the operation, the fact remains that is an eyesore. We are open to ideas, but our latest is to border the front lawn with boxwoods and then plant pachysandra all around the silos such that they will eventually cover them up. Or we could build tables over them and use them as footstools for a front cafe area (no, I'm kidding !)

Nothing But Hot Air

With all the hot air I've been hearing, it's nice to see some of it put to good use.

I tend to wake up pretty early in the morning, and when I do I work my way through breakfast, brew a pot of coffee, and then move myself up to my office located in the turret room on the second floor of the house. It is still black as night then, especially now that we have screwed around with the clocks. I start up the computer and go through my morning ritual by checking in on my favorite news outlet to see if any scandals have surfaced overnight or to see what the day's news cycle is going to repeat over and over again. I answer my emails, or generate some. Pay some bills, start making a list of stuff I have to buy to continue on some of the many projects I am juggling to get done. I tend to be fairly deep in thought doing all this.

 Let's face it, no one is bothering me. It is quiet at that time. Employees aren't due to arrive for another few hours. My mind is busy.

And then I hear this buzz.Without being conscious of it, the sun has popped above the horizon and started to show some light. So I look out the window and I see that there is a balloon crew setting up on my front lawn. The balloon is completely unfurled and the chase car is pointing towards the bottom of the opening; on the front of which is this huge fan blowing air into the balloon. On occasion Mark, the owner of "Balloon Explorer" (was Virginia Balloons) would go over and give the balloon a quick zap of flame from his propane tank. There is continual straightening of lines, more flames to heat up the internal air, and a gradual lifting of the balloon until it becomes fully vertical.

Today he is giving two female passengers a ride. Must be a bucket list item for them, for they are officers at a local naval base and one of them will be retiring from duty soon.

Things happen quickly now. The three of them jump in the basket. A balloon this size tends to move with the slightest wisp of air. They are nearly impossible to control while still being on the ground; it is best to get them airborne and then only be concerned with the 3 mph breeze pushing them in a southwesterly direction. Height is easily adjusted by those quick bursts of flame that the pilot commands.

I get those "happy waves" from the new adventurers. They have learned my name and, in unison they yell out "Bye Dave". I have seen it many times before, so I give them a quick wave as they rise above my house and get pushed by the wind. The chase car driver picks up any loose items that have been left behind and then comes over and thanks me. He tells me the intended route, about 15 miles towards either Wakefield or Waverly, depending on the winds aloft of course.

But Mark, whom I have known for years, takes a.moment in his flight duties to snap a picture of the winery we are building.  From his vantage point it certainly is a unique perspective. And a nice way to start the day.

The Building Pad: Building the Winery Part 4

The basic process for putting in a building pad is to first scrape off the topsoil, going down maybe 12 to 18", grading the area, and then back-filling with a compact-able sand soil mix. Seems simple enough. So the contractor who had put in our service road (see prior blog entry) proceeded to drive the blade of his bull dozer into the earth and push dirt out of the way.

The corners of the building were staked out with those little tiny red plastic flags. They were like the ones you see when someone surrounds their property warning they just put up Electric Fence for their dog. Nothing really sophisticated about it, other than we had a surveyor come in and verify their location. I wanted the building to run parallel with the roadway we just had put in, which runs in a perfect east to west direction. It'll mean our front door will aim true north, and the rear of the building will face true south, which will be ideal for when we eventually install solar panels on the back roof.

A good machine operator can get the dug out plane to within an inch or so in variance over the 5000 square foot area, an accomplishment only achieved through years of practice and a drive towards perfection. He didn't need all the new fangled monitoring devices found in the newer dozers......he could tell how he was doing by the "feel" of his treads as he slowly moved back and forth. And if there was a mushy area he felt that too, as his 18 ton machine dipped ever so slightly while moving from one end to the other.

As with many contracts and quotes, there is the always present escape clause or fine print that a contractor uses to resolve unforeseen things, and not really knowing what one will find below the surface of the soil is reason to have wording that covers the contractor if a surprise is found while excavating. Wouldn't ya know it that after he dug out the required depth, a quick walk around on the newly graded surface inspecting suspect areas pointed to a major problem which he quickly shared with me.

There was this one area, maybe 20' x 50', that felt like you were walking on a trampoline. The ground, seemingly hard on the surface, floated under your feet as you walked on it.So a person of less than 200 pounds made the ground seem wishy-washy. This wouldn't bode well if you poured a slab on top of it and then added a building on top of that. Though the slab might hold true, eventually it would crack under the weight stress and then cause a nightmare in the integrity of the the structure.

The apparent cause for this is that soil has a skeletal structure, with pores filled with air or water. Normally this isn't a big deal, however when something of massive weight is put on it this honeycomb structure is compromised and collapsed. It is best to have a solid base to work on and not depend on the massive weight of a building to be uniformly dispersed throughout the footprint. The mushiness we felt was the sponge-like nature of our soils, where my weight was just moving the water around that was within these pores. There are two real choices one can choose from to resolve this new found problem. One is to wait it out and let the water table drop, and then compact the region and put in some additional fill. That wasn't likely to happen since we are entering our wet season here and the soil wasn't going to dry out any time soon. The other option is to dig it out and hopefully we can find the extremes of this soft spot, get out all of the weak earth, and then back fill once again. We had to go with option #2.

But this required bringing in the excavator, for the bulldozer is not meant to remove specific chunks of earth out. So the next day the contractor brought in another massive machine (same one he used on clearing the edge of the pond) and proceeded to dig down until he hit solid ground. When he was done digging, much like a dentist performing a cavity removal in a rear molar, he had made a mound of dirt 3 stories high. He had successfully identified the weak spot and removed all the weak soil that was doing the shifting. It was now time to back fill, and back fill, and then still more back filling.

When the project was "finished", 38 dump trucks of fill were brought in, along with another 27 dump trailers of sandy fill. To put this another way, a dump truck holds about 20,000 pounds of fill, which at about a ton a cubic yard comes to about 10 yards of material. The dump trailer each holds about triple this, or 30 tons of fill. Certainly makes you want to reconsider suddenly jumping in front of one of these vehicles on the highway ! So all in all we had 1190 tons of fill put into our front roadway and building pad. This equals over 2 million pounds of fill that would equate to having a 9" layer of sand put on an acre of land.

We are now ready to go onto Part 5 of Winery Building, installing the septic system. This is needed to be done sooner than later in order to jump ahead of the rainy season and to know where drains need to be roughed in before we pour the concrete foundation. We must hurry; it is the middle of October.