P I C N I C

Chris built the fermenter this weekend. It’s got a 200 gallon capacity and is made with Oregon Oak.

I was hoping that by being saturated with water, and expanding, that it would be water tight.

Here we’re filling with water to test.

There were major leaks. Chris got the idea of stuffing string in the cracks. I thought that after a few hours the leaks would seal, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Tomorrow I need to make batten strips and caulk all the seams. This is not as water tight as a barrel.

The grapes are being harvested on Monday, so I have very little time. I thought it would be not till Friday, but Dan called me up on Saturday, so I’ve been scrambling since then. Plus he says he can’t lend me the 1/4 ton bins he said he could, so I need to find some way of transporting all the grapes! Yikes.

My parents recently went to Germany, to see the places my dad lived when he was a refugee. He was later in the Air Force, so I suppose he’s attracted to airplanes doing duty as food carts.

He also saw this coffee shop and immediately thought of Joel. I showed the photo to Joel, but he wasn’t interested in the name. ‘Why are they displaying espresso machines in the window?’, he asks me. Indeed, it looks less like a coffee shop and more like an espresso machine store.

I finished the roof on Friday night. Saturday morning it rained all day, so I had a deadline for finishing. I was also helped along by some (healthy) competition from my neighbors. On the same day as I started roofing my little cart this crew shows up and begins tearing off and reroofing my next door neighbors house. There were about 10 guys all working, making a huge racket with the deconstruction, the nail guns that sounded like machine guns, and by one guy who sang very loudly.

The weather forecast has become unreliable, thus fall has arrived. Yesterday they said rain on Saturday. Then when it started raining in the afternoon they said it will rain today! not Saturday. In any case, it’s important to get the roof up as fast as possible and I hope to be done by tomorrow.