Barn Remodel Week 2 - Upper Driveway Side

WHAT A DIFFERENCE ONE WEEK MAKES

Here is what the barn looked like on Tuesday morning, February 21:

And this is what it looked like this afternoon - just one week later:

Thanks Mike & Crew!

Our Corks Arrived!

Upper Barn Remodel Week 1 - Concrete

With the warmer temperatures, we were able to do the basic concrete work that is literally the foundation of fixing the exterior wall on the back of the upper barn.  We needed to reinforce the section of the loading area, in front of the stone wall, so we can then install a new footer and frame in the barn doors.

The first step was building a "form", into which the concrete would be poured.  We used plywood, reinforced with 2x4's and metal posts.  We did this 2 weekends ago, which meant that the old barn doors could not be closed tightly, as the "form" stuck out too much.  We had to use old barn beams to prop the doors shut from the outside.  Luckily, this held the doors for a week.

On Saturday, we started mixing and pouring concrete - we all worked on this most of the day.  Zach brought over his electric cement mixer, and while he mixed the concrete, Lars would use the wheelbarrow to take the mixed concrete and pour it into the form, where Jens would poke it down and use an air driven drill with a blunted tip to "vibrate" the concrete by pushing the running drill on the outside of the form.  We used 70 bags of concrete on Saturday, and as we got near the end, one side of the form gave out under all the pressure - we lost about half our work :(

On Sunday, we got more concrete, fixed the form and reinforced it even more, and started the process over.  We did get it all done by the middle of the afternoon.



This evening, we "popped" the form off, and could admire the new outside wall of what will be the loading area for the upper barn.

Parking Lot Progress

A PennDOT crew arrived today to start reshaping the bank below our vineyard.  (Their backhoe had been parked in our field since before Christmas.)  The timing was perfect:  It was an unseasonably warm day, the ground was dry, and we had just finished roughing out the driveway and parking lot area.

They got half of the bank reshaped today - which totaled 12 dump truck loads of dirt, unloaded in our future parking lot.  Jeff used the tractor to spread the dirt as much as possible between the loads and by evening the are looked completely different already.

Food Establishment License

We received our official PA Department of Agriculture Food Establishment license, which is required for all food manufacturers (including winemaking)