Grape Vine and Fruit tree trimming. Chopsaw station

Water tanks

They didn't arrive on Friday the 24th as expected.  Damn.  NTO contacted me just before they closed to say that the sub-contractor needed my phone number.  IDK why NTO just didn't given them my number..

Anyway, I was able to contact the local/sub on Monday morning (everyone was closed over the weekend) and arranged for delivery at the farm on March 3.  That's my CWS day but I will have to be there that morning so I will probably take off for the farm Thursday afternoon.

Grape vine and Fruit Tree trimming started

It was a real nice day on Friday - I mean like in the 70's!  So i decided to work out trimming the grapes and trees.  I have been sick the last couple of weeks so this was really nice to get out in the nice weather.  I got the grape vines entirely trimmed and 13 of the fruit trees done before I called it quits for the day.   It rained and was miserable on Saturday, but I was able to get back out on Sunday, and managed to trim another couple of rows of trees.  I still have about 4 rows left to trim.

Jay Knepper stopped by and asked if I could help him trim some plum trees next weekend.  I said sure.  The trees he described are much older trees that aren't producing like they should, probably because they haven't been pruned properly for that last several years.  I will take a look and see.

Chops saw station and more shop cleanup

I did some estimating and thinking and video watching until I came up with a design for a chopsaw station that should work for me.   I have a lot of "scrap" wood in the shop that is in my way - in fact it was in the way of where I wanted to put the chop saw station!  So I used as much of that scrap as I could in building the station..  I still needed to do a good amount of cleanup and fiddling around to get the chop saw station installed.  I must admit though that having more table space really helps when cutting the OSB sheets!  Here are some pictures:

I used 3 different non-connected tables.  This helped in leveling later but my intent was so that I could use the tables as outfeed for the table saw - which is at the same height.

I used the remains of an old barn gate for the table top of the chopsaw table and for the underneath storage shelves

Its hard to see in this picture, but the table to the right looked way off square. I checked it and the table was ok - but the FLOOR was really off level there!

I added shims under the feet of the two tables on the ends.   Look at the feet of the table on the right - the far right side has almost a 1/2 inch shim under it to bring to level!

Each table is level, the and chopsaw is shimmed up to level between the tables.

I hope I don't need to move these much! LOL Shimming is easy but it could be painful if I have to redo it alot.

The shelf on the left of this picture needs to be moved so that I can get to my radial arm saw (I need it for dado cuts)

So I moved it here!  I am using it for fastener storage and some small tools

I can finally get to the raial arm saw again!  I still need to clean a lot of crap out of there though...

Hugelkultur in my raised beds

I survived the flu!

So i decided to celebrate by going out and doing some good ole manual labor!  Nothing like being house-bound for over a week to make me go mad.  

The "Hugelkultur" thing is a fancy name to an old technique of simply burning wood and debris under your garden to help maintain moisture and improve soil quality by adding lots of organic mulch and wormfood!  In fact, this is not the first time I have used this technique in this same raised bed!  

Depending how much wood, the size of the wood pieces, and other factors, about every three years I dig in more wood.  This time I did discover some of the wood pieces hadn't quite all rotted up yet, but they were close enough.  This time I added a considerable bit more wood to the mound.  Also added some leaves that didn't get to the curb last fall.  

The soil quality is much improved where I have done this in the past.

You can still see some raw clay here in the dirt i dug out from deeper down and along the edges of the bed.

Here it is all filled back in and ready to plant

I still need to put a fence around this - the dogs LOVE to dig in fresh soil!

Also, I don't trust this weather - damn near hot recently - and then cold and windy just days later.  This doesn't bode well for the fruit trees this year!

Workbench completed!!

It's done!

I finally got all of the hardware together, drilled the holes, and bolted it all up this weekend!

Here it is - all coated with Watco danish oil to kill any bugs that still may survive in the wood!

I was going to "glue and screw" the joints but it was too cold and these carriage bolts seemed to be holding fine!

It took most of the day to drill and attach all the fasteners!  Oak is HARD and this is thick!

I had to lift the new top off the the old workbench - man it was heavy!  I decided to use a 8 ton hoist for the job!

After the top was off I had to move the old bench out!  UGH - tight quarters!

TADA!

I am planning on using it in this position (or close to it) - its nice to have all sides of the bench available for use.

You can see (if you look close) that I added a couple of wedges under the bench top between the tops of the legs.  This was needed because the bottom of the bench is bow shaped!

I lag-screwed the top to the base with 6-5 inch lag screws.  Here you can see that there is some light between the table and the base - this is because of the bowed bottom of the workbench top.  

Ready to add a wood working vise or two!

OK - decided to add it to this side.  I haven't fully decided if I will put the other on the front of the table or if I will put a leg-vise there instead.

I attached the sacrificial wood jaws to the bench vise

The "fog" on the vise is up here - I don't have holes in the workbench yet to hold the pegs though.  I will probably wait until I really need them - seems a shame to drill too many holes into nice top!

The old bench is reused

I didn't want to just trash the old bench - its a nice bench!  But this workshop is too full as it is.  So I decided to move it up to the garage and use it as a chainsaw, mower blade sharpening station!

Just enough room here I think.  I can park the tractor to the right..

Loaded up with some of the sharpening utilities here.  Bench grinder and chainsaw sharpener mounted.  

The bench isn't very thick - I might have to put on another sheet of plywood (or OSB - since I have some of that laying around yet)

Notice that I added a support leg to the middle of the bench to keep the top from sagging.  I might end up moving the big toolbox over to this side as well.  Then I can use the other side for fencing stuff and garden chemicals.

Yes!  The tractor fits in with plenty of room to spare.   Now I just need to get some power out to the garage!  I will need to put up some shop lights too...

I moved a bunch of the crap from the shop into the garage too - this stuff is a problem I haven't decided yet how to handle.  The chemicals will move to the other side of the garage - I have a shelf there all ready for it.

Refrigerator relocated

I got around to moving the old refrigerator from the van to the basement.   I used the tractor to get it close and then the hand truck.  Getting it down the outside "bilco" stairs went easier than i had suspected!

I need to reassemble it yet

It should be cleaned more thoroughly before reassembly

I am hopeful that the mice won't damage the plastic parts before I get it back together

I figure it will be nice to have a 2nd fridge here to store produce and meat before processing.