Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Barn

Working on the Driveway

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We started phase two of our driveway project in January, with a”backhoe expert” reshaping the bank on the back of the barn and re-positioning dirt to match the engineering drawings.  The driveway section up to the barn is pretty much done, but we need to get at least ten dump truck loads of dirt hauled in to finish shaping the parking lot to the required specifications.

Lucky for us, PennDOT asked if they could reshape the bank below the vineyard – to reduce water run-off.  And we get to keep all the dirt they have to move!! They plan to excavate sometime in February.

We bought two dump truck loads of shale to cover the driveway section up to the barn and built a wooden form for concrete to reinforce the section of the stone wall below the large barn doors.  Now we are waiting for a warm day to pour the concrete.

Tasting Room Staircase Access and Floor

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We finally “broke ground”  (in this case “broke ceiling”) on the future tasting room access from the downstairs production area of the barn and put in a staircase.  That was step 1 of our November remodeling project.

The more important – and more tricky – part was a complete overhaul of the floor, of what will be the tasting room.

All the floor board were torn out, and engineered structural beams were inserted between the original hand-hewn beams. Then everything was leveled with strips of wood.  It took a lot longer than anticipated, but it was definitely worth it.

The beams were covered with a layer of plywood, then a layer of thick insulation (from recycled entry door segments), followed by a second layer of plywood.  The floor is super sturdy, no longer creaks, and it is perfectly level!!  This space is roughly 20 ft by 40 ft.

More Excavating and Barn Clean-up

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This was a good weekend for spring clean-up work.  We had someone come in and remove all the accumulated metal “stuff”.  All that is left to move now is the old silo.  We also took time to clean up around all the sheds and the barn and we moved more things out of the barn (like the row boat and trailer).

Over the past couple of weeks, Zach has been getting rather good at using the grader attachment for the tractor.  He graded a section of the  old “barnyard” that desperately needed cleaned up;  and he started moving piles of dirt around in what will someday be the parking lot below the barn.

While Zach was moving dirt, Tina found a spot of wineberry plants, which we dug out and moved to the garden before the tractor would destroy them.

What a Weekend

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Our weekend got off to a great start:  a new granddaughter was born on August 21, just before noon. Welcome Elena Weyant, at 6 lbs 14 oz, and 17 inches long…

We also harvested most of our corn and worked on blanching and freezing on and off all weekend – with help from Zach, Rachel, Toben, Fiona and Adelaide.

And Tina continued staining barn boards – using up another 5 gallon bucket of stain – slowly making progress.  Someday we will have the most awesome barn in the county!

Staining Barn Boards

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We are taking advantage of a few sunny days – and the short period between blackberry harvest and grape harvest – to work on our barn boards.  We have over 3600 board feet of white pine lumber, which we plan to use for refinishing the outside of the barn with a board and batten look.

The lumber was cut back in January, and since then has been drying out nicely.  The boards are definitely ready to be stained – but it took us a while to choose the type of stain and the color.

Cetol® SRD

We finally selected a Sikkens product, called ProLuxe, which is a translucent, water repellent wood finish that is good for siding and log homes.  The color we eventually decided on is a simple natural oak, the lightest of the sample shades in the picture above.

We are staining both sides and all the edges of each board – and each board is 16 ft long….so this is a very slow process.  It took a full day for one person to stain 4 layers of boards from our pile of 27 layers.  We used extra fence posts as supports for the drying boards – they were taking up the entire area in front of the barn.