Servicing the Tractor

Last Post of 2018

I hoped that the last post of the year would be a hunting story. But unfortunately, I have been very busy with maintenance on the vineyard and have not had a chance to go hunting lately. 

Our tractor is the most important piece of equipment that we have. Without it the vineyard would grind to a halt. We are surrounded by several vineyards and they have newer tractors than ours. But they don't maintain them so they are constantly breaking. I make sure that we take very good care of our tractor. 

Every year at the end of the season I give the tractor a good pressure washing to remove all the dirt, grape leaves, and grime. Then I give it a good look over to see if anything is in need of attention. fortunately it is in good shape and just needs general maintenance. 

So into the shop it goes for an annual maintenance. 

 This year it is just a simple oil and filter change, fuel filter change, and a lube. 

 I started by draining the oil. This oil is only a year old but because of the dusty environment that the tractor works in it gets very dirty. That is why maintenance is so important. 

After I installed the new filter I wrote the date on it, this way I know exactly how long the filter has been in. I also put my initials on it so I know I was the one that did it. 

Here is the fuel filter, the fuel gets a lot of dirt in it. I should look a the fuel tank cap and see if it needs the seal replaced. 

Here is the new filter installed, it is much cleaner. The tractor should have much better fuel delivery now! 

Put some new oil in, and give all the zerk fittings a shot of grease and that job is done. 

Happy new year everyone! 

Chainsaw Sharpener

This month a good amount of time has been spent trimming trees in the vineyard. In doing so I have dulled several chainsaw blades. My local saw shop sharpens blades for about $10 per blade. I wanted to be a little more self sufficient and have the ability to sharpen my own blades. I tried to do it by hand with a file, but did not get good results. So I went on a search for the right saw sharpener. 

With tools I usually buy the best that I can afford, I learned a long time ago that skimping on tools does not work out. However, a good chainsaw sharpener is $200-$300. I just could not justify that much expense for a tool that I rarely use. I could see if I was a professional sawyer, or lumberjack. But I am not. 

After a little research on the internet I found that people were really happy with the Harbor Freight chainsaw sharpener. I usually don't but stuff from Harbor Freight but in this case it was on sale for $29, so I figured that if I can sharpen 3 blades I would break even. 

  I ordered the sharpener and it is pretty nice for a $29 tool, the housing is made of plastic and the little adjustment knobs are cheap plastic. But I think that it will do the job.

 The chain goes into a little track, there is a handle like a bike brake that you squeeze to clamp the chain in place then you bring down the grinding wheel. The placement of the chain, and the cut of the wheel are adjustable. 

 Here is a picture of the handle and the brake/clamp mechanism. 

 Once you have everything adjusted it is just a matter of holding the clamp, bringing down the grinding wheel, bringing the grinding wheel back up, advancing the chain, and repeating.

 It takes me about 10 minuted to sharpen a 80 link chain. So far I have done 2 chains, 1 more and I will have broken even. I have to say that I am very impressed with this little sharpener. I think that it will give me many years of service if I take care of it. 

Tree Trimming

Maintenance

Now that Harvest is complete and the vines are starting to go dormant, the attention turns to maintenance.  There are lots of things that get done over the winter when the vines are sleeping, To start with there are lots of trees that need to be trimmed. The vineyard has many oak trees and as they need to be trimmed to allow access for the tractor and make sure the vines get light.

In this part of the vineyard there is a group of oak trees that has not been trimmed in a long time. The trees are starting to overtake the vines so it is time to trim them back.

When I was younger I had a very close call with a chainsaw. I was cutting a limb and as it fell it pushed the saw into my leg. The saw was still spinning and cut through my pants and cut my leg. The cut on my leg was painful but not that bad. What scared me was that if the cut was a little deeper it would have severed my artery. I was alone and would probably have bled to death.

So now any time I use the saw wear Chain Saw Chaps to protect my legs. I also have a first aid kit zip tied to the milk crate that holds my fuel and oil. Chain saws can do a lot of damage very quickly so it is important to treat them with respect.

Before long I had a pretty good collection of rounds collected that needed to be split. I split my wood by hand. Oak can be very hard to split if you let it dry out. So I make sure that I split my wood either the day I cut it or the day after.

Splitting wood one piece at a time on an old stump is very romantic, but it is a lot of work!

Here is a little trick if you split wood by hand. Get an old tire from the tire shop and nail it to some cribbing. In this case I use some offcut 4x4s.

This does a few things:
1) It raises the wood to be split to a comfortable level.
2) It captures the wood so it does not go flying.
3) It allows you to split several logs as you work your way around.
4) If you miss, or when you split through the log the Maul is stopped by the rubber tire. It is like a shock absorber when the maul comes down.

Here it is all set up to go

Here is the wood after a few strikes of the Maul. Much easier than having the logs go flying off a stump and having to pick them up.

It does not take long to build a pretty good pile of wood

Here is a shot of the trees after they have been trimmed. The vines now have much more sunlight and the tractor can get access to them to spray, net, etc.

I wish this was the only stand of trees that need to be trimmed. Unfortunately, there are lots of them that need it.

Ranger Update

Polaris Ranger Storage

I am a big fan of our Polaris Ranger. I think that it is a wonderful little vehicle and has numerous uses around the Vineyard. But there are a few things that drive me a little nuts. One of them being the storage in the cab. First there are two storage shelves inside the cab. 

One on the Drivers side

And one on the Passengers side

They are essentially little shelves. It was very thoughtful of Polaris to add these molded in shelves. But, they are absolutely useless! Anything that you put on the shelf falls off when driving. 

I finally got tired of picking up my gloves, water bottle, etc. off of the floor and decided to do something about it. I did a little surfing on the inter-web and found that I could buy cargo nets from a place called Obie (https://www.organizedobie.com/Custom-Nets).

I did a little measuring, and for less than $20 I was able to get nets that go on the front of the shelves. Now I can use my in cab storage shelves without having all my stuff dumped on the floor. 

Drivers side now:

Passengers Side: 

 View of both: 

Final Harvest

 The Fall colors are in full swing and we are finally harvesting the Syrah.

Typically we harvest in September, But this year the fruit was slow to reach the final maturation. We wanted to let the sugar content get a little higher but the grapes were starting to shut down for the winter. So we needed to harvest.

 Here you can see that the leaves are turning colors and dropping. The vines are getting ready to shut down for Winter.

The pickers made quick work of the Harvest, they picked about 10 Tons of grapes in one day.

Here are a few bin loads ready to take to the winery. All in all we had 20 bins full of grapes. 

 Here is the first load heading to the winery, 10 bins, approximately 5 tons (10,000 pounds) of Grapes.

 For Syrah, the winemaker likes to "Whole Bunch Ferment" So we do not crush the grapes like we did with the Rose. 2 Bins weighing approximately 1 ton get loaded into plastic fermenters. The fermenters will be covered and the grapes will be allowed to ferment as is. I am not a winemaker so don't know all the benefits but it is a more traditional way of fermenting that was used before de-stemeres and large presses were available. Here is one of the fermenters full of grapes.

 Harvest is a very long day and filled with work. To wrap it up as the sun was setting I needed to clean all 20 bins and get them ready for storage. It was a long and eventful day.

Bird Knife Sheath 3

Bird Knife Sheath Continued

After the leather had dried I used contact adhesive to bond the back loop to the back. Here are the two pieces before I stuck them together. 

Once bonded together I was able to punch the holes for the snaps that would hold the knife sheath to my bird vest. These two pieces will be stitched together in a later step.

Here are the snaps set. 

For the flap I chose to use a button stud instead of a snap. Here is the screw on the backside.

To keep the screw from marring the knife I chose to glue a thin piece of deer hide over the screw. 

I bond all seams before stitching. It makes it easier to stitch and it also helps in the edge finishing. Here are the two pieces prior to bonding with contact adhesive. 

After they are placed together I like to go over the bond line with the hammer to make sure the surfaces are touching and bonded. 

Then the pieces are stitched together. Here all three pieces are stitched together, the pocket, the back, and the flap. I use the double needle method so this seam will last a long time!  

Here is the sheath in its final shape. The edges still need to be finished at this point and the leather needs to be oiled/nourished. 

 Here you can see the back flap with its snap. This will be used to attach the sheath to the loop on the bird vest. 

After the wet forming cycles the leather is left very dry and is in need of oiling. I like to use Obenaufs products and start with the "leather oil" after the oil has soaked in I will treat the sheaths with Obenaufs "LP" to give it a good protective coating. The oil darkens the leather at first but it will soak in and leave the leather a tan color. I think that the oil gives the leather a pleasant color. 

Here is the knife sheath being installed on the side of my Filson Bird Bag.