I’ve made changes to my workshop, again. If you’ll recall, I spent a large chunk of time at the workshop reorganization project, which I wrote about in excruciating detail last winter. Well. It has resumed. Before I proceed, I just want to thank those of you who took the time to write to me with recommendations for organizing certain areas and sharing what systems have worked well on your farms. That advice was invaluable and I, without a doubt, implemented much of what came my way.
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What I have now, however, may be an Icarus or Tower of Babel situation — either the process of creating the perfect workspace will see me exceed my reach and my proverbial wings will fail as they did Icarus, or the perfection I am attempting to reach is not for mere mortals.
Grainews is a place for practical information on running a farm. This much I have learned in the nearly 10 years I have been writing for it, and, of all the intangible things you have let me write about, walking you through the process of a wholesale rebrand of this farm’s workshop may be as practical as I am able to get.
I have labelled bins for almost everything that didn’t fit in the labelled drawers or the pegboard wall. My waste collection system of renting a dumpster for the yard and separating garbage, recycling and scrap metal is working well, although I still need to figure out a system for items like spent aerosol cans and other things likely deemed contaminated or toxic (I’ll figure something out — the farm doesn’t go through oodles of such things).
I built myself a workstation out of steel, plywood and old shiplap. I boosted the Wi-Fi in the shop. My mom found a Smart TV at a garage sale last summer, which has a nice home on my workstation. It is here where I have been taking Zoom and Teams meetings, which has been fun, because, if my screen is on, there will inevitably be a question directed at me about where, exactly, I am at and what that person is seeing on the screen.
This gives me the opportunity to hijack a meeting for a bit to chat about workshop organization, motorcycles and that 1946 Willys Jeep waiting for me to restore it.
There is a corner — the southwest corner to be exact — that hasn’t been touched. Until now. The waste-oil burner my dad invented used to be there, along with an oil tank, our pressure washer and a large air compressor. Even when everything else was clean and organized, I struggled to know what to do with that space, and if I can’t see it in my head, it’s not happening. Quick aside: I have graph paper all over my property. I have found it to be so advantageous to be able to draw out my ideas. This goes for building projects, for sure, but also shop organization, house organization — you name it.
Back to it. The corner was busy. Earlier this year, the water jacket of the oil boiler sprung a leak. While it marked the end of a long and interesting era tied to an invention that delivered free heat to the workshop and the farmhouse for decades, it also forced me to reconceive that space. I got rid of the large oil tank, removed the boiler and all the oily accessories surrounding it, wheeled the pressure washer to somewhere else in the shop and then stared at the space for a long time.
We decided to install the wood-electric heater that once heated the house Jamie and I live in now. In order to get the thing WETT certified, I had to update the shop’s chimney and raise the whole unit 18 inches off of the ground. I welded what I think is quite a nice little shelf for the furnace to sit on and two local companies came down to install the chimney and hook up the electrical components.
After that, the corner started to take shape. It looked so much cleaner. But the piece I am most proud of is the corner shelf I built for our air compressor. It’s triangular and it raises the compressor a good seven feet off of the ground. I will be running air lines throughout the workshop with drop-downs and quick-connect couplers by every 220-volt outlet, as well as a few additional ones — four of five in total.
The corner looks a lot different than it did. I think the pressure washer will fit snugly under the compressor, but I will get to that once I am done installing the air lines.
This project continues to be rewarding. It pushes me to think about old things in new ways. The ideas/graph paper drawings don’t always come fast, but, knock on wood, they do eventually hit me. I’ll quit before I get too close to the sun, but not a moment before that.
