LIBERTY Stackyard Up and Running
We had to wait a little longer than we wanted to, but the LIBERTY stackyard has now been up and running for nearly 5-weeks. Producers around Emmetsburg were able to get their Eligible Material Owner applications approved around January 24th and start deliveries. To date, we have brought in nearly 23,000 bone-dry tons (BDT) of material. We are averaging around 900 BDT of material into the yard everyday, which will allow us to meet our need production need of 770 BDT per day. Best of all, we hit the 770 BDT mark on the second day of taking bales. This was a huge accomplishment for the team, and they have not stopped since. Our guys in the stackyard have been doing a great job and deserve a much needed pat on the back. Great Job Guys!!!
Through these first weeks of delivery, we have experienced two of the bigger challenges we were waiting for. First was the opportunity to deal with snow in the yard. The team is learning how and where to move snow when it comes. They are attacking the areas where the most work will occur and balancing that with the unloading of trucks. We found that by slowing the inbound trucks, the snow gives the guys extra time to clean up the yeard.
The second was thawing and melting. With the seasonally high temps last week, much of the snow in the area melted causing muddy conditions. As well, the frost has begun coming out of the ground and both loaders and trucks were digging down into the roads and bale rows quite a bit. As we struggled with this, we also heard about the farmers struggling too. It looks like as we turn into spring of the spring of the year, we will be able to get by working in the mornings when the ground is firm, but may need to stop in the afternoons as the ground again turns soft. This is all part of the learning process!
Along with bale deliveries, we have performed our first round of sampling on the storage study bales that are in the stackyard. We will be doing analysis on these samples to determine the dry matter losses and compositional changes in the biomass that are occurring. We will perform more samplings throughout the year to see how these parameters change over time in the bales.
