Adventures in Tank moving

My mother said there’d be days like this…

One of my wines, Accolade, is a sparkling Chardonnay. I originally made this wine in 2003 for my son’s wedding. Bo and Heather married in April of 2004. I didn’t make the wine in 2004 because no one was getting married. However, the wine has been popular and so I decided to make it again this year despite the lack of wedding bells.

We also moved our custom crush operation to Wooldridge Creek winery this year. Wooldridge Creek is also located in the Applegate valley, so our whole operation is closer to the vineyard. The barrels and laboratory equipment have already been moved. None of that posed any special difficulties. The only really tricky move left involved the jacketed, 5000 liter, pressure tank that we used to make Accolade. The tank is about 6 feet in diameter. It is about 10 feet tall and while empty it weighs in at around 3000 pounds. There are fittings, gauges and piping on this tank which could be damaged if the tank were laid on its side. The plan was to hire some piece of machinery to lift the tank and set it upright onto a truck. The truck would transport the tank to it new home at Wooldridge Creek winery. The piece of machinery would then set the tank onto its newly poured concrete pad.

The first hitch was that the tank being 10 feet tall could not be transported on just any old flatbed truck. Most flatbeds are about 4 feet off the ground. Special permits are required to transport something over 14 feet high. Power lines and overpasses can be about 14 feet off the ground. So a special “lowboy” trailer must be used. Next the machinery to lift said tank needs to be capable of lifting the 3000 or so pounds, as well as being transportable to the new location. It also has to be available when the “lowboy” was available. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to hire both the crane and the truck from the same company. After a couple of weeks of scheduling conflicts and delays, we finally had both crane and truck available at the same time.

During the preceding weeks, the weather out here in the Applegate valley had been dry. The night before the bit tank move, it stormed. The sound of rain and wind pelting the roof of my LOL (the lap o’ luxury RV I call home) kept me up all night. Nonetheless, I was up before sunrise that morning. No time for coffee, I sped through the morning mist to RoxyAnn winery where I met both the truck driver and crane operator. The truck pulled into the orchard behind the white cinder block winery building while the crane operator surveyed the situation.

The crane is very heavy. It weighs in at 62000 pounds. The overnight precipitation had left the ground soggy. To complicate matters more, there are several underground water lines bisecting the space next to the pressure tank. The trenches that held the water lines had been backfilled. We found out quickly that ground wasn’t very solid. The crane’s stabilizing “feet” sunk into the mud as the crane attempted to lift the tank. We tried shoring up the feet with 4x4’s and even a sheet of metal. Finally, we cut loose the tank and moved the crane to firmer ground further away from the tank.

You can’t really fudge with physics. The tank jacket was supposed to have been drained. As a matter of safety, we felt that transporting the tank without 1000 or so pounds of sloshing liquid in it would be safer. Although we had spoken about this on several occasions, somehow the glycol was never drained from the tank jacket. Neither was I informed of this. So instead of weighing about 3000 pounds (as I had told the crane operator) the tank actually weighed about 4500 pounds. The crane can lift a certain amount of weight at a particular height and angle of the boom. There is some wiggle room but not 1500 pounds worth of wiggle. As the crane picked up the tank, the tank legs didn’t lift with the rest of it. Next the crane begins to tip. There is a delicate moment of balance after which there is no return. Either the crane and tank would topple or the tank bounces alone. So the operator did what he had to do to prevent the impending disaster. He dropped the tank.

The truck driver and I were standing in close proximity of the tank. One might wonder what goes through a mind when 4500 pounds of iron careens out of control. Well I can’t tell you; as I recall no conscious thought whatever. I seemed to immediately teleport about 20 feet way. So did the truck driver. Other witnesses attest that as the crane came off the ground, the crane operator’s eyes became as large as saucers. Impressively, he maintained bowel control.

In the subsequent moments, there was rending of cloth, gnashing of teeth and a little cursing. Some stainless steel piping was crushed and the bottom insulation shredded. Other than that, the integrity of tank and its jacket appeared to be intact. The good news is that no one was harmed. The damage could have been much worse. If the tank had swung south instead of north, the winery building could have been damaged (think wrecking ball). I don’t like to even consider what would have happened if the crane had tipped over.

The rest of story involved slow careful movement of the tank onto the truck. The truck rolled the winding road to the winery where the tank was uneventfully placed onto the awaiting cement pad.

My mother told me there’d be days like this.

We have harvest

We have harvest!

In the wee hours of our first harvest day, there was a sprinkling of rain. 7 am, the sky was overcast. I could hear strains of Latin inspired music from car radios of the picking crew as they pulled in next to the barn. Fred, the wonder dog, peered nervously out the RV window (the lap of luxury or LOL, pun intended). I pulled on my hat and gulped down my coffee. Harvest had begun.

This year’s crew is mostly familiar faces. Many have been working harvest here since we bought the vineyard in 1999. The crew members are nearly all related by blood or marriage to each other. Most live here year round. As a group, they are fast, efficient and experienced pickers. Their friendly chatter is soon drowned out by tractor engines.

Fifteen pickers, two tractors and about seventy five buckets head toward the east end of the vineyard. I drive my little red tractor. Behind which I tow a short trailer with two fruit bins. It’s loud; Yanmars are nicknamed “Yanmar Hammer” because the 25 horse power diesel engines sound like jackhammers. Dennis drives his big green and yellow John Deere. It has front forks which carry one fruit bin.

The pickers start out ahead of us. Four or five to a vine row, they space the 5 gallon buckets under the vines so they can fill a bucket and keep right on picking into the next bucket. The tractors troll up and down the rows to collect grapes into the wooden fruit bins. As soon as a bucket is emptied into the bin, it is whisked off to another vine to be refilled. The picker receives a ticket for each bucket picked. The going rate this year is 90 cents a bucket. We harvest until about 11am. By then it’s getting hot. Fifteen pickers, two tractors and the buckets return to the barn. Once in the barn, everyone sets off by themselves to count their tickets and drink a coke.

Since we will pick more fruit, the grapes are shuttled into the barn. We want to keep the sun off the grapes until tomorrow when all the fruit will travel to the wineries. On day one, we have filled 22 fruit bins. Each bin holds in the range of 1000 -1200 lbs. of grapes. That works out to approximately 11 tons of Chardonnay.

I wake to Mexican music. Ice on my window tells me that dawn would reveal frost in the vineyard. It’s quite a bit colder than the previous morning. Fourteen pickers, two tractors and about seventy buckets troop back to the vineyard. When we finish about 3 ½ hours later, 22 more bins are full.

The grapes are going to three different wineries. Grapes for LongSword wine are loaded onto the smaller flatbed truck. They are first to leave. The balance of the grapes is headed up north on a 40 foot flatbed trailer. Stacking these fruit bins is a tricky business in itself. Further complicating the task is the fact that this flatbed is taller than the other. The tractor’s forks can only lift one bin at a time. The bins must be stacked two high in order to get them all on the truck. Fully extended the forks lift the top bin about 6 inches short of clearing the bottom bin. So several frantic phone calls later, a taller forklift is on its way.

All and all, harvest went smoothly. I’ve stopped shooting at the birds but they are singing the blues anyway. No more free lunch.

Harvest 2005

Well, tomorrow is harvest...

The culmination of a year's toil, sweat and sometimes tears (depending on the weather) comes down to these next two days.

This year, winter was relatively warm and dry. There was talk of drought. Thankfully, it began to rain in April. Problem was; it kept raining all through June. So a wet, cool spring delayed fruit set about a month.

Late fruit set is not really a problem as long as there is sufficient heat in the summer and a generous Indian summer. The heat came in July, intense but short lived. September brought more rain and cool weather. Nature relented and blessed us with a couple weeks of warmer weather. But by this time harvest was late. The birds, perhaps sensing a difficult winter, gathered impressive numbers. The feeding frenzy began.

I don't like to shoot at birds. I'm not a hunter; I grow wine grapes. More than that, I sincerely feel remorse at each bird that I kill. My comfort is that I am a poor shot. Most of the birds are merely startled rather than dead when my rifle sounds. That said; a dead bird eats less than a traumatized one.

To set the record straight, I see nothing wrong with hunting for food. I eat meat. I don’t kill these birds to eat them. Rather, I kill them to prevent them from eating my livelihood. I still don’t like killing them. Well, except for crows. There are some of God’s creatures that I just find detestable. Flies, mosquitoes and crows, I gleefully slaughter those. Starlings too, I must confess; they’re just rats with wings.

I suffer physically for this skirmish too. The large purple bruises on my shoulder attest to my aggressive pursuit of the gluttonous birds. I’ll be grateful when the crop is safely on its way to the winery and I can stop firing that 12 gauge. My neighbors, as well as the surviving birds, are welcome to any grapes missed during picking.