I am hoping the following pictures will be the last you see containing any hint of snow. It sure has been a long winter here.
Bill has continued working on his boat model. By my next post it should be completed and I will include a picture of it all done. He has worked countless hours on it. A very detailed wood boat model that would have had me using a sledge hammer in only a few days. A tribute to his patience.
One day we were driving back from a job and Bill noticed a shop that said toy trains in the window. He just had to stop. Turns out it is not a store or dealer, just a guy who collects old trains at his business establishment. His business is actually a fabricating shop but you can see from these 2 photos he is in to trains big time. They run over head of where he works. Bill has been there twice now. The first time only the secretary was there and she said the owner was out for the day. She said she is glad when that happens as the noise above 'bout drives her crazy. He runs them a lot when he is there in the office. Now this guy's really into trains. Bill loved seeing his layouts though and it does look pretty cool.
We had a wonderful visit with the Marshall's over Bryce's spring break. Had three wonderful days being able to spend time showing them our haunts. Took this in front of the Temple one day. It was freezing cold while they were here and the wind would nearly blow you over, especially on the top of the Hill Cumorah.
This picture is the end of March people. We hit a bad storm going to Buffalo for a part. The only good thing that day is that Bill got a "Ted's" hotdog in Buffalo, which he loves. We ate it fast as we had an ice storm on the way back.
See, March 27th. Ugh!
Something I have always wanted to see was how they made maple syrup. We had a chance to go to a local Maple syrup farm recently and take a tour. It was so fun. The bucket above is hung from a tap and the "clear as water" sap drips into the bucket. I had expected it to be brownish in color but it was just like water. In fact, the sap is 98% water and 2% sugar. I tasted it and it tasted like water. I couldn't detect any sweetness in it whatsoever. The temperature has to be just right for the sap to come up from the ground. Somewhere around 40 degrees. March is best as the temps get cold at night then warm up during the day. If the bucket is on the east side of the tree the sap drips faster as it is warmer on that side. It can drip really fast when the conditions are perfect.
The sap is collected in holding vats like below. This one is actually being filled by the hoses connected to taps that are on a hillside. Instead of buckets the taps are connected to hoses and gravity causes the drips to flow down into the vat. You can see tons of trees all tied together with blue hosing if the trees are on a slope. Otherwise you see buckets hanging all over the trees. They hang up to 4 buckets on a tree depending on the size of the tree.
Here is all the buckets hanging on the trees. They put a little roof on the buckets so yucky stuff doesn't fall into the buckets.
The buckets are gathered by the workers and poured into a tank like the one above. They pour it through a filtering material.
All the sap is then taken to a Sugar shack like this one.
The sap is boiled in a vat like this one for a long time. They boil the water just about out of it. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make ONE gallon of pure maple syrup. Mr. Everson is in picture. It is his farm. They tap about 100 acres of maple trees. A good year produces about 1000 gallons of syrup. Now you know why it is so expensive. But sure is yummy!
This Maple farmer boils his sap using wood. This man in the apron is the fire tender. There are tons of wood stacked everywhere for this process. The sap only runs for about 3 weeks total so all this happens in a very short period of time.
It was fun to see and now we are enjoying the memory on our pancakes.
We traveled to Buffalo to see Bill's cousins and took a day ride to the near by ski places. Remember, it is the end of March. The skiers were enjoying a great day on the slopes. Looked like so much fun but all I could see in my future were white casts on my appendages.
Out at the Whitmer farm I was trying to sneak up on hundreds of white geese that were very near the building we were working on. Needless to say, you can't sneak up on geese. Someone told, and off they went. I never saw such a large flock. Very noisy. Don't know what kind they were but they were white.
This pitch fork looking tool proved to be a devil of a job. Bill and I spent more then 5 hours removing Christmas lights (April 10th) from the Smith farm grounds. After that job, I am tempted to abandon Christmas. The only good news is that we won't have to do the job next year because we leave Feb 25th. We removed HUNDREDS of strands of lights. It was so windy it is a wonder we aren't both in Canada right now, wrapped up in lights.
The fences had them too. After the work, the cold, the wind, and a bit of rain on top of it, I was beat. Bill's arms felt like they were going to fall off. Neither Bill or I had any trouble falling to sleep that night.
Well, that's all I have to report. We keep pretty busy around here. Once in a while we have lighter days and enjoy visiting with other senior missionaries that are serving in the area as we travel around. They are all so fun to see. We have lots of work awaiting better weather. It will be nice to work in shirt sleeves again and zoom around in the golf carts. Til next time. Us Nagel's
