Skip to main content

Building the new farm yard

So late last night the farm manager got a surprise call.  Would it be ok for the building guys to start building the new warehouses on the site of the new farmyard?  Jennifer answered: ok.

The contractor told Jennifer that many of their current worksites are unsuitable for heavy equipment because of the rain.  The contractor thought that our site would be fine because of soil composition and elevation.  So this morning, two very large cranes arrived on the new farm building site and a large complement of builders too  -- yep they are erecting a lot of steel over the next few days.  

They arrived around 7 this morning (the sun was not up yet,) but there was a lot of site prep.  Jennifer told me that she counted 40 builders on our site.  I asked the contractor, why so many.  He said it's simple, most of our sites are too damp for heavy equipment and so we have a bunch of guys with nothing to do for the next two weeks.  We will complete the job in two weeks. They moved at speed set up lights so that the site was illuminated before sunup, and teams of guys went around the site finding the "right steel" so that they could be raised in the correct order.  Younger guys (apprentices) broke out the grinders and started cleaning the steel bolts that were set in the foundations.  Each piece of steel weighs something like 6 tons.  You have to understand that these are massive warehouses.  They are 40 by 250 meters and are 15 meters tall, tall enough that a semi can drive right in (we actually have a loading dock).  

By 10 am one beam was already raised in place (there are something like 40 in all).  They borrowed our trencher (it was part of the deal instead of renting one), to start the trench for water, electricity and gas utilities that under the UK code are buried at different depths.  I mean it was 10 am and the two lads digging the trench from the country road to the new warehouse site were about 2/3rd of the way.  The contractor told Jennifer that the under-road trenching machine would be delivered tomorrow...again the result of the terrible weather where sites are unable to take delivery or use equipment because of the water levels.  

Note:  Thank you for your comments about the curing time for the concrete.  Heavy machinery is not circulating on the concrete pads.  They will use scissor lifts but only next week, when the pads will have fully cured for two weeks.  The contractor is concerned with the edges of the pads and not where the steel beams are bolted, they anyway sit on deeper concrete posts that were poured 10 days earlier.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more