Nut Factory Starts to Take Shape

So, I don't know how many of you will remember how the business' plot of land looked a few months ago when we started putting up our pine nut processing facility, but if you scroll down a few posts you'll see that this summer it was just a patch of grass with a lot of trash scattered on it.

Then, a few weeks ago we updated you and we had foundations being poured and a metal garage that was being used as a storage facility and a shack for the guard to live in.  Well, now I want to show you where we're at now, because it's quite a bit of progress since then:

This picture is a week or two old already, but when we last left you we were just completing this part of the job - the foundation.  You can see here a couple of the workers working to put a drainage pipe through the foundation wall.

Next on the agenda was a floor; they poured reinforced concrete about 6 inches deep over the whole thing, making sure to line it up with the proper height to match the foundation and also to leave a slight dip in the middle for drainage when we wash the machines with hoses.  As you can see below, a rain proved that they had done a good job leaving a slope to the drainage hole (even though the drain is yet to be installed so the water is just standing).

Next we had our first equipment installed to the site.  Ideally, this would have been done after we already had the hangar there, or at least a roof, but we were running behind and nut season was upon us so we got the dryers out and to the site so that when we started buying the nuts we would have a way to dry them!

While we had the crane out there we decided to unload our furnace as well.  Which was good, because we had been wondering how we were going to get that massive 1000-pound piece of cast iron out of the back of my coworker's truck!

Our first nut purchase!  In the background you can see the initial equipment delivery, in the foreground is about one ton of pine nuts still in their shells.

The dryers weren't set up yet that first day, but the weather was nice and we were worried about spoilage so we decided to set up a tarp and just dry the nuts in the sun.  My coworker's wife here illustrates what a ton of pine nuts looks like drying out on the ground:

We placed a single ad on TV, just a text line running across the bottom of the screen, 3 times per day, with our number and "We buy nuts!"  It was massively successful, bringing us all the nuts we could handle (and eventually we started turning people away because we couldn't afford to buy any more than 10 tons or so this year).

We built very temporary roofs to shield the dryers and other equipment from the rain, and started drying the nuts.  We're only using one of the dryers currently, as our little generator can only run one of them at a time, but it's enough to dry several tons a day and we'll hopefully have all our nuts dried by the middle of next week (plenty of time to make sure they don't mold, we hope).

Nut buying can be an adventure; sometimes the whole village bands together to bring their nuts together in one truck, which means a lot of people milling around the weigh station and confusion as to which sacks of nuts are whose and whether or not we've weighed them already.  After a few hours we had a good system set up and it worked well.  

These people's livelihoods depend in great measure on these nuts, which might be as much as 25% of their annual income in a good year like this one!

The dryer, now up and running, is capable of drying out about a ton of nuts every 4 hours or so.  If, that is, you can keep from eating them all while you wait!

Here's a video of how it all looks, but you'll either need to mute your sound or just ignore the generator running in the background, sorry:

And that's about it!  Hopefully by next post we'll have an update that includes a hangar-style building going up over top of all of this, so check back soon for that. 

Thanks for stopping by, and most of all thanks for keeping us in your thoughts in this busy and stressful time.

Eating "All-Natural"

We've had occasion several times in the past few days to go out and enjoy nature and the foods thereof, and I thought I would turn it into a post.

First, some new friends invited us over for dinner, and afterwards we out to help them harvest their garden.  They even gave us some of the produce!

 The boys love carrots, which seems weird to me for little boys, but I'm not complaining!

Then, this weekend, some of our closest friends invited us to go out and gather pine nuts, as the season is in full swing and why would you miss the chance to be outside when it's so nice?

 

Steven found the first pine cone and mushroom, and he was very proud:

 We didn't find enough food in the woods to sustain us (we were too close to the road and almost all the pinecones and mushrooms were taken already), so we also brought along shashlyk (shish-kebabs).

Matthew was so proud of his pinecone that we didn't have the heart to tell him it was one of the ones the squirrels had already gotten to and eaten all the nuts out of.

Even though we didn't find a lot of nuts, we still had a great time as a family walking through the beautiful stand of trees.

Even though the nuts were all gone, we still got a demonstration of the way T people gather the nuts.  Either they take a log and beat the tree with it ...

... or, if they're more of an enterprising type, they might make themselves a wooden mallet.  Either way, the key is to pound on the tree (don't worry, tree-huggers, it doesn't hurt the tree!) and get the top shaking hard enough to make the cones fall.

Anyway, it was a great day, and the cones we did manage to find were delicious!  Plus, we had fun together, which was the main goal of the day.

More exciting news on the pine nut facility coming up next week, so be sure to come back!

Father/Son Camping Trip, Pt 2

I don't know how many of you will remember Father/Son Camping Trip Pt 1 (link here), but last year I took Steven on an overnight camping trip.  Well, Matthew felt left out, so I promised him that next summer it would be his turn to go camping with Daddy.  Since the summer was coming to an end (it's definitely over now, with temps below 0 at night, but these were taken a few weeks ago) I decided it was time for Daddy and Matthew to get out into the woods.

All the wood was wet, but after enough coaxing, we managed to get a fire going, much to Matthew's delight.

Better still, a delicious hot dog to roast over the fire was the next order of business.  It was a busy agenda, though, because straight away after supper we moved on to the evening's entertainment - throwing rocks into the river.

We did this until I couldn't stand the mosquitoes any more (though as you can see above Matthew could have done it all night; he was having a great time) and moved into the tent.  The novelty was fun for ... about 20 minutes or so.  Then we read a book (we're working our way through the Little House series) and went to sleep.

A fun time was had by both, though as you can see below by the next morning I think Matthew was ready to head home.

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to tune in next week when we hopefully will have some pictures of a completed foundation and maybe even the concrete floor poured at our pine nut factory site.

Foundation

So, you've probably been wondering why we disappeared off the face of the earth.  Well, it's not because we haven't been up to anything lately.  On the contrary, it's because I've been working all the time, and when I get home I just haven't had the energy to get online and write a blog post.

But finally the guilt has gotten to me, plus it's Saturday and even though they were working out at the site today, I stayed home to rest and spend some time with the family, so tonight I think I can muster the energy to regale you all with some pictures of how things are going.

How what is going?, I hear you ask.  Well.  As if you didn't know.  The construction of the pine nut factory, of course!

That's right.  We're finally to the point now where we're talking about construction as an actual fact, rather than a nebulous future activity.  Ground has been broken and hopefully by the end of October we'll actually be buying pine nuts from the fall harvest.

So, this is how it all started.  The land that our facility will be built on was empty steppe, but it was being used by a lot of people as sort of a dumping ground, so the first thing was to clear the trash and mounds of rubble.

The next step was to grade the land to make it roughly smooth, or at least near enough to build on.

Once we started to have construction equipment delivered, it was of course necessary to have a guard onsite, so we bought a metal garage in town as sort of a combination guard shack and storage place for cement, etc.

First we had to go to the site where the person was selling it and have it picked up with a crane ...

... and then get it to the construction site and have it delivered where we wanted it.

Around then is when we started the process of drilling a well as well as digging a channel to the well from the building.

Below is what the pipe looked like when it was installed from the well to the building.  You may be thinking that it looks like a ridiculous amount of layers, but remember, it gets down below -50° here.  

The geological survey says that the ground freezes to a depth of 11 feet on our site, so first you have to dig a channel that deep.  Then, the little white pipe is the actual water line, about 2 inches in diameter (running alongside it is a grey power line for the water pump).  The next layer is a grey foam insulator, and around that, running in a spiral the whole length of the pipe, is a black heating cable.  Around that goes a plastic sewer line, and then on top of that goes a special yellow styrofoam insulating layer that is a couple of inches thick.  In the end your 2 inch water line is about 9 inches in diameter, all to make sure that the line doesn't freeze in the winter.

So, once all the plumbing lines that have to go underneath the foundation are in, you can start digging trenches for the foundation, so that was our next step.  In the meantime, we built a fence around the property which you can see in the background, but mainly this photo shows the crane digging the foundation trench.

Next we put down a "cushion," which is a thin layer of concrete at the base of the foundation.  You basically pour a few inches of concrete so that when you pour the real foundation on top of it, the water doesn't drain away into the sand before the concrete hardens (which would obviously weaken it significantly).

You can also see the first vertical metal rebar reinforcements here; they will obviously be reinforced further with horizontal bars as well.

Gravel and sand delivered, concrete mixer in place - time to start pouring!

Well, almost.  You have to have the molds built first, obviously.  Otherwise there's nothing to keep your concrete where it's supposed to be.

In progress, pouring one wall at a time:

This wall is almost poured up to ground level.  Actually, the side walls which will actually support the main hangar frame will eventually be 65 centimeters higher than the ground level, but for now they're being poured to the ground level so we can then install the anchors that will hold the building in place.

Here we are working on the last corner.  You can see the little gas generator that we bought for construction; it runs the power tools and cement mixers that are onsite.

And, just in case you're interested in what this actually looks like in action:

And that's about it for today's post.  If you're looking for things to keep in your thoughts, we need to have the concrete all poured by the time the frost hits.  The weather is currently predicted to stay above freezing this week, but next weekend should be our first frost.  As a result, we need to have all our concrete poured by then, which will be challenging.  We also hope to begin purchasing nuts in the very near future, as soon as we can sort out details on where to store them while the building is completed.

Look for more posts in weeks to come with pictures of the actual building being erected on top of all this concrete!

Bobbie's Point of View

Some trips take a bit longer than planned.  This was a 2-hour trip that turned into a 6-hour trip.  If that doesn't teach you to be flexible I don't know what will.

Hello folks - welcome again to our blog!  

The last several posts have been written by Jesse so I thought I would inject one of my own.  This summer has been the busiest for us since we've been here.  Almost every weekend (and some during the week) friends have called us up to take us somewhere (sometimes only giving us 10 minutes to get ready).  Language studies (as in book study and meeting with helpers) have been put on the back burner for now but we are more than making up for it in talking practice.

Just one of many "shashlik" trips we've made.

Everyone knows by now that we have started a pine nut business here and have been working on getting it up and going.  The past few weeks has been a whirlwind but things are getting done faster than we ever thought possible here.  We have only been able to see Jesse for a couple of hours in the evening since he has been gone all day working on the building but the boys and I have kept ourselves busy none the less.  

They both are home all day so I'm trying to do extra homeschooling which they seem to really like.  We've also enjoyed doing a few experiments like seeing what happens when you put a grape in the sun for a few days, or why do we use flour in cake.  One of my favorite ones was when Matthew got cut and he saw his blood.   Being an x-nurse I took the opportunity to explain what happens to the blood and why it stops bleeding after a little while.  The boys can now tell you all about the blood, heart, and platelets (as much as a 5 year old brain can comprehend).

Our experiment to see why we use flour in our cakes.

One of the main things I love out here are the open fields where boys can be boys.

Already trying to impress the girls.

It's been a good time with the boys but I have struggled as well facing my own weakness (temper being the main one).  People think we have it all together out here but I tell you we don't.  We are still humans but one thing that I've learned by being the mother to these wonderful, spirited boys is that I can not do it.  That's right.  I'm not perfect (hopefully you didn't hurt yourself when you fell out of your chair from this shocking news).  The more I struggle with my faults, the more I come to realize the reason we are asked to cast everything on him.  

I'm sharing this with you in case some of you struggle with the same thing.  Having a strong willed child can test you like you've never been tested before.  Are you strong enough to handle it?  I'm not.  I know who is though.  I've been reading the book "The Strong-willed Child" and it has reminded me that unless you are properly centered you will continue to be frustrated (as I have allowed myself to be).  Do I still yell at my sons?  Sometimes.  Do I still make bad decisions when it comes to raising them?  Oh yeah!  Do I lift my family up more because of it?  YES!  And that is why I think I have the sons I have.  I'm excited to see the plans He has for them.  Because of that, I will continue to give them up to the one who made them.  I love you boys so much.  Y'all make me a better person because of who you are.

A trip to the salt lake. 

The boys testing their engineering skills.

Once Matthew found this hole there was no getting him out.  I think he ended up spending around 2 hours in there!