Reply-To: bernie%bpc.uucp@bbn.com
Organization: Fantasy Farm
From: bernie@bpc.uucp
Newsgroups: misc.rural
Subject: Factory update
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 01:21:56 EST

It's been a while since I gave y'all a factory report, and lest you think
that nothing much is happening, herewith is a brief update:

Stage two of the project was completed about two weeks ago: the guy that
did the excavation came back out and made all of the piles of dirt go
away.  This proved to be one of the most expensive parts of the whole
factory project [so far] --- $7,000+!.  About 2/3rds of the expense, though,
was actually 'tidying up'.  Even after grading in the new building and
fixing up driveways and such, there was a LOT of extra dirt [and topsoil]
left over (because even though the factory is on about the flattest place
we could really put it, it is still somewhat cut into the side of a hill:

                 /
                /
                |
          HERE  |
                |
     ------------
    /
   /
  /

[the building is 60'acroos the grade and 40' along it.  In the course of
the 40' the hill drops almost eight feet!].  Anyhow, the question was:
what did I want done with all of this extra dirt.

Now, our farm is really pretty [as those of you who've seen pictures will
attest], but nonetheless it hasn't been so perfectly taken care of for
the last while.  In fact, you can tell which of the previous owners
stopped tending which fields by the nature of the randomness growing on
it.  In addition, there are several rock piles, assorted old tires and
miscellaneous other junk [e.g., HUGE chunks of concrete: apparently, in
the wake of previous building projects, previous owners disposed of
the extra concrete in the mixer-load by just dumping it here and there].

Anyhow, what I did was designated a mostly-useless valley in one of the
pastures as being the 'landfill', and he spent almost a week collecting
just about EVERYTHING non-organic and dumping it into the hollow.  Then
he covered it over and, in essence, 'built' new pasture over the mess.
Very very nice to have had it done, and the farm looks truly gorgeous
now --- not an eyesore in any direction! --, but big bucks....

So now I have a building shell and there'll be no more heavy construction
done.  Right at this moment, we have four operations proceeding in parallel:
  1) we're getting the electric service installed [I got the meterbase and
  service entrance inspected and approved yesterday, and ApCo said they'll
  be out next week to hang the transformer and connect up the building].
  We're also furious wiring the building, putting in recepticles and lights.
  In addition, we'll be running a 60-amp circuit to the barn [about 100'
  away from the factory] and rewiring the barn.
  
  2) the heavy-haulers and riggers are supposedly busily doing their thing
  and some time or other, maybe next week or the week after, they'll
  bring Lynn's magic machinery down and move it into the factory.
  
  3) In about two weeks, we'll have a well guy by to connect the factory
  up to the well that serves that half of the farm [we have two wells
  on the farm: one serves only our new house, the other serves the barnand 
  the old house [and now the factory].
  
  4) We've made arrangements to get a HUGE boiler and a HUGEHUGE heat pump.
  The former for the incredible amount of hot water Lynn needs to 
  scour the fleece, the latter to heat and cool that building [40x60x17'
  makes for a LOT of space to heat and cool!].

That shoudl keep us busy for a while.  In addition, when the well guy
comes, I'm going to have him 'T' into the main water feed into the new
house [i.e.,from the 'other' well] and leave that free: then I'll rent
a ditch witch and dig about 500' of trenching to connect up the
two freezeproof waters I have [putting one in the middle of each of
the two pastures we're using].  This is really a race: there's about
a month, maybe a month-and-a-half, before the ground freezes enough
that digging trenches becomes REAL difficult...  Let's see, fi the
well pump guy comes in two weeks and finishes his stuff u pin a week,
that'll leave me about a week to trench, lay the pipe, bury the mess
and install the waterers... piece of cake...

Some time in here i have to get cracking on laying in the 10+ cords of
wood I'll need to heat with.. it is already cold enough at night that
it'd be nice to get some heat in the main part of the house!

  /Bernie\
Newsgroups: misc.rural