Plans

Plans was Originally Posted on April 11, 2007 by lavarock

Last week the engineers brought by my farms’ preliminary water catchment diagram. It shows the 4 tanks and piping between them and how each acre will be piped. The full specs should be delivered to me this week so that I can go get quotes on the installation.

Although I probably don’t have to use it, I searched and found a Gantt diagram program (for free) [ http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net ] and started loading my project into it. Gantt diagrams are graphs of blocks of time that either follow each other or are performed simultaneously. This helps you plan tasks and the number of people working on a project at any given time. It also helps you ensure that one person is not assigned more tasks or workload than he has time to perform.

An example of some tasks are, that I have to put a layer of gravel on the ground where the tanks will be, prior to putting the tanks there. That has to be done in that order, however, I also need to kill all weeds on the farm, which includes the area where the tanks will go. Since the area for the tanks is small in relation to the rest of the farm, they are essentially different items not related to each other., and I can just zap the weeds at the tank location and treat both tasks as not related. Both the spreading of gravel and the killing of weeds are tasks that are not dependant on each other and can be done at the same time, unless they are to be done by the same person. THAT is what the software helps you determine. It helps you plan tasks that overlap and might be done by the same person.

Since moving here, I tend to perform these Gantt charts in my head for simple tasks. For example, if I need to go into town, I try to schedule a number of stops at one time. They should be done in a particular order to save gas, since the trip is all along one long line. I leave the house, then stop at the Post Office tio drop off any coffee shipments (and if all received mail is not yet distributed, I will stop again on the way back). Then if I have coffee to drop off (or need to stop by the USDA or talk with the extension agent) I stop there. Closer to Kona I may stop by Sandra’s to play with the dogs, then perhaps stop by Christine’s to drop off green coffee for roasting. Then it is into town for shopping.

Depending on what I need to buy, there may be a need to price shop. Based on the item I might stop by one or more of Lowes, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Ross, Radio Shack, K-Mart, Home Depot or COSTCO. At COSTCO I would gas up with the cheapest gas in the state. Then after seeing what prices I found, I would reverse the trip and stop and buy what I needed. Luckily each of these places in right along the same road and are familiar places to anyone who has visited here.

If I need to buy food, I would have put the electric refrigerator in the truck and it would be cool already. I would perhaps buy frozen food at COSTCO or KTA or Safeway and then head home. The fridge allows me to make any stops along the way and keep the food cold for hours. It just plugs into the lighter in the truck and sits behind the passenger seat. It has no moving parts except for the small fan and operates on a heat transfer effect on a solid-state device. It is called a Peltier junction, for those who care.

So looking back, you may already coordinate trips to town at perhaps a bit less complicated manner, but we do these types of organizing projects all the time, unfortunately, many of us schedule too many overlapping projects and then get few of them done. Isn’t that why we go on vacation, to drop all of these concurrent projects and schedules, allowing you to randomly load new stops in the trip.

One of my first tasks now is to spray weed killer on all weeds. As imagined, I did an online scan for prices, discounts and sales, then I headed into town. Although I might have found a better price by buying a generic product, it gets difficult doing all of the math and conversions to see what coverage you would get per dollar. I ended up with Roundup from COSTCO. Later a neighbor suggested a competing product at a better price, but didn’t know where they bought it. This is why I broke down and bought the Roundup at a decent price, even though I might have saved a bit of money elsewhere. I hate to overpay, but by price shopping to the extreme, I don’t get much work done.

Roundup appears to work by interfering with a plants ability to gather sunlight and create chlorophyll, thus cutting off an important source of nutrition to the plant. I don’t think it is considered a poison per se because when we talk about poison we mean that the item would be fatal to humans should they ingest it. I don’t suggest drinking Roundup or its cousins, but there is no skull and crossbones on the label. I think of it as zinc oxide that you smear on your nose to keep the sun off of it. Based on this description, you may realize that Roundup works as a POST emergent, which means that the plant must already be above ground and have leaves. A PRE emergent weed killer would attack seeds and keep them from germinating. Thus roundup does not kill seeds and thus has a very small time that it is active. A heavy rain might wash the stuff off, so you would want to spray it on a sunny day when the leaves are open. Also, you might only have to spray the front of the leaves that face the sun, but I don’t know. It makes sense not to spray it when it is windy, as the droplets would carry and perhaps stick on plant leaves that you do not want to kill. Some people buy a cheaper version without a surfactant, and add a bit of hand detergent (soap) to break the surface tension and have the stuff stick to leaves until it can begin to do its work.

Now you might ask yourself “Why do I care?” Well it may just be that you wanted a nice diversion from your own schedule to read about something that you would never investigate on your own. Although my description is probably not quite correct, you are welcome to read further!

Last night I was up in town helping someone with a computer and was close to Sandra’s. I thought about seeing the puppies, but it was too late and she is a bit under the weather.

The weather has been pretty good, but it has looked like rain every afternoon. That has forced me to spray weed killer early in the morning when the sun is out [now you know why].

I just got the call that my plans for the catchment tanks are complete and I can swing by the USDA office and get them. In the past week I have been up into town 3 or 4 times, which is not the best way to plan these trips, so now I am thinking, is there anything else I have to do up there today?