Another tour

On Friday Gutwein Popcorn north of Francesville celebrated its 25th anniversary with an open house. I had never seen the plant and was impressed with its size. We came fairly late to the open house and the parking lot was almost full.

The firm served visitors a lunch from a food truck and then offered a tour. The tour began with a look at some of the equipment used in the early days of the company. The machine on the left filled fifty pound bags and the operator would then stitch them shut and move them so they could be placed on a pallet. Once the bags were all paper but now most are a tough plastic that can take a lot of abuse without ripping.

Leaving that building we could see some of the storage bins. Since popcorn matures only once a year, it needs to be stored so it can be packaged year around.

Walking a bit, we came to their new packaging plant.

The assembly line was very short. A machine filled bags every few seconds. They then were automatically sewn shut and fell onto a conveyor that took them to a formidable looking robot that stacked them on a pallet. Once the pallet was full, the robot would start filling a pallet on its other side and a fork-lift operator would take the filled pallet to a machine that would wrap the filled pallet in a plastic wrap. The pallet was then ready to be shipped.

For a better look at the robot, see the video on Elect Kendell Culp's Facebook page, hopefully reachable here. A bit more information about the company is here.

In addition to 50 pound bags, the company produces really big bags of popcorn that weigh more than a ton. We only saw one line producing small bags with two pounds of popcorn and the tour visitors each received one.

Gutwein exports a lot of their popcorn and apparently Pulaski County is the Nation's largest producer of popcorn. I asked if they sold to ConAgra and was told ConAgra was a rival, not a customer.

Happenings

Sorrel & Rye Mercantile will open soon on Rutsen Street across from the Post Office.

NuBloom Naturals is now open on North Van Rensselaer Street. Their hours are from noon until 8:00 and they have a big green cross in their window. 

On Thursday I noticed a booth next to the Smoked food truck. The booth is owned by the people who own the food truck and this was a test run. They expect to have the booth at the County Fair in a few weeks.

Work got started on a new horse barn at the Fairgrounds but seems to have stopped to wait for the unraveling of red tape.

The walls are still not up on the ambulance building across from the entrance to the Fairgrounds.

Last week rhe Carnegie Players presented two short plays based on Sherlock Holmes stories. The theater was the former site of Country Bumpkin, a long, narrow space. The stage was set up along one of the long walls.

The cast was different in each play, with Holmes and Watson played by women in the second play. The attendance on Thursday was good, with almost every seat filled.

Friday was the first dollar day at the pool. 

The Farmers Market had live entertainment on Saturday.

One of the booths had locally grown mushrooms. I asked the vendor how he grows them and it sounded like a lot of work.

The fence for the Hyper Center is partially finished. It is intended to keep little kids away from the street and parking lot.

The fencing for the new lift station is installed.

This weekend the Blacker Fields hosted the penultimate tournament of the year. At one time I thought the word "penultimate" was the most useless word in the English language, but then I learned that antepenultimate was a word.

The next tournament is July 1 & 2.

We got some much needed rain Saturday night/Sunday morning. I think the total was about two thirds of an inch. 

Titan Construction is working in the old power plant getting it ready for whatever it will become. There is still one large generator in the plant.

The previous post on the Forsythe house is the 12th most popular post of this blog, with just shy of 3000 views.

Drainage Board Public Hearing

The Drainage Board held a special meeting on Wednesday morning at the Fairgrounds. It was a public hearing for the reconstruction of four ditches in the northeast part of the County that serve land that the Dunns Bridge Solar Park occupies. The four ditches are the Hinshaw Ditch #52, the Rassmussen Ditch #90, the Sands Ditch #2603, and the R. E. Davis Ditch # 111. The meeting agenda has fifteen minutes for public discussion for each of those ditches, but the entire meeting lasted about three hours. The meeting was scheduled for the Fairgrounds assuming that there would be too many people for the Sparling Annex meeting room, and that assumption was correct. There were at least 40 people who attended.

Each of the four sections began with a short presentation from someone from BF&S Engineering (Butler Fairman & Seufert) who gave some background and presented estimates of various costs such as tree removal, removal of sediment, and correction of adverse slopes. Then the public had a chance to speak. If the Commissioners expected a lot of unhappy people, and I suspect that they did, they were not disappointed. There were many speakers, but only a few major themes. There were a lot of questions about estimated costs and the costs of specific items. The Surveyor explained several times that the costs were estimates and probably high because if a bid is 10% above the estimated cost, it cannot be accepted. Therefore, he estimates costs on the high side and the actual cost will likely be considerably lower than the estimate.

Some people thought that NextEra should pay for all the costs and I do not think the Commissioners disagreed. A very common complaint was made by people who have been maintaining their sections of a ditch and they, naturally, thought it unfair that they should have to pay for cleaning the ditch for people who did not maintain their part of the ditch. Several commenters asked what the benefit of cleaning the ditches was to them. They saw large costs and small or no benefits. A woman commented that the farmers know best how to maintain the ditches because they live there and they should be allowed to continue what they are doing. This was the only comment that was met with applause.

The largest of the ditches is the Davis Ditch, It has several laterals and the estimated cost of cleaning the whole system was about $1 million. This ditch sometimes attracts beavers and the comment was that when they are on the NIPSCO portion of the ditch, nothing is done about them. One farmer suggested that the main problem of the ditch was that NIPSCO does not maintain its part of the ditch. 

After about two hours of comments, the meeting was recessed while the Board discussed among themselves what they wanted to do. What they came up with surprised me. For the three smaller ditches they gave the landowners the option of cleaning the ditch by themselves under the guidance of the Surveyor. If the work was not done by the end of December, then the Surveyors recommendation would take effect and the reconstruction of these ditches would be put out for bid. A landowner in the Hinshaw watershed agreed to try to organize the other landowners, but no one at the meeting stepped up to organize the other two watersheds. One commented on the Rassmussen Ditch that it ran through the yards of homeowners who would not want anything done. It takes just one stubborn landowner to tank the effort to clean the ditch cooperatively. Cleaning cooperatively will save a lot of money and avoid paying the cost of the engineering studies. The Board wants to know by its August meeting if the landowners in each watershed will be trying to do this privately.

The Board did not give that option on the Davis Ditch but approved the Surveyor's recommendation to seek bids for reconstructing the ditch.