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| Laying out the concrete pads for the legs of the rack. Crusty, one of the farm dogs is supervising the job. |
What's the firsts job of day #2? --- purchase the new lumber to make the frame that we will be mounting the solar panel racks on. So right after breakfast and routine farm chores, we headed to Ace Hardware (the only store within a 2 hour drive that sells lumber). Three 8' 4x4s, either 10' 2x4s, eleven 8' 2x4s, nails, and some concrete stepping stones and we were heading back home.
Next job, remove the two papaya trees that were in the way. Normally I'd feel bad taking down fruit producing trees, but these trees only produce fruit suitable for chicken feed. Not sweet or good tasting. So I was willing to sacrifice them. The chainsaw made quick work of the task. Soon both trees were down and in pieces. I gathered up all the green fruits and young leaves to use for chicken feed. The rest of the trees went into a hole destined to become my next flower bed.
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| Smaller of the two papaya trees that had to come down. |
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| The larger papaya tree down and ready to chop up into smaller pieces. |
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| I was surprised to discover that papaya trunks are hollow. |
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| Trunks were solid down by the base. They oozed a very slippery sap for several minutes. |
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| About 2 foot above ground, the trunk became hollow. |
While I finished cleaning up after the tree removal, hubby started laying out the materials for the ground rack. This time we were building it out of treated lumber, which the vog won't destroy. And after a bit of contemplation, checking the angles of the sun, and determining where tree shadows will fall, hubby settled on a plan of attack.
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| The frame almost completed. The rest of the bracing needs to be made. |
After a brief lunch break, we started building in ernest. The sunshine had disappeared and rain threatened. Geez, what else? But we plowed onward. To our surprise, we lucked out. Although it spritzed a time or two, the rain held off. And after much sawing, drilling, hammering, and squaring up, a ground frame started taking shape. By the end of the day, the basic frame was complete.
Yes, we're not the fastest carpenters around, but we work for free. Wow, I can't ask for more!
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