The Belly-Ache Tour

Before we arrived in Vermont I researched tours in the area and found several interesting places.  When we arrived at the RV campground we were given a map and a list of tours that included most of the ones I had already found.  We appreciated the campground going to all the trouble of printing out a map and the helpful list of places to visit.

We had several stops planned on our first day.  All of them food related!

Maple Grove Farms was our first stop.

There wasn’t an actual “farm” at this area.  There was a very small museum and gift shop.

Outside the museum is this wonderful wooden hand-carved bottle of maple syrup.

Inside the museum was an original candy mold of their maple leaf.

 Maple leaf candy mold.

Maple candy to purchase.

This pan was the original way of turning sap into syrup.

There was a wonderful photograph of women packing up the candies.

We saw these women through a window while walking to the gift shop.

There was another building on site where the pancake mix is packaged.

We headed to the gift shop for a for a few purchases.

Our next stop was the Goodrich’s Maple Farm.

Maple trees are tapped in the spring, so we were not able to see the actual process.

Our guide was Ruth Goodrich.  Her and her husband, Glen, own and operate the sugar house.  Their families settled in this area in the 1830’s.

Ruth is holding a drill used to tap the maple trees.

This machine is used to boil the sap. 

55 gallons of sap are needed to make 1 gallon of syrup.

This is a slab of a 200-year-old tree that was blown over.  You can see the imprints where the tree has been tapped for many years.  It takes a Sugar Maple tree 40-60 years to grow about 12 inches in diameter.  Trees under 12 inches are not tapped.  For each foot in diameter a tree can have one tap.

After the very informative tour with Ruth we visited the gift shop for a few purchases.

We passed up two more sugar houses on the way to our next stop.  We could have spent the whole day visiting different sugar houses, so we decided to limit them to just one today.

Next on our list was Cabot Cheese.  We have been to many cheese factories and watched the entire production through windows.  We were disappointed to learn that Cabot Cheese stopped offering factory tours at the beginning of the year.

We were shown a 9-minute video about the company.

640-pound block of cheese.

They had a wonderful gift shop with lots of samples.

We made a few purchases.

Our next stop was Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream.  We were looking forward to this tour.

We were not prepared for the number of tour buses!  After searching for, and not finding, a parking space, we decided to leave this tour for another day.

After passing up Ben and Jerry’s we headed to our last stop of the day.  Cold Hollow Cider Mill.

The gift shop is at the front of the building and is huge!!

We finally made it to the back of the building where the cider was being pressed.

250 pounds of crushed apples called a pomace (mash) are used to make 25 gallons of apple cider.

The pomace is pressed under 100 tons for 15 minutes.

The liquid is pumped to the pasteurizer then straight to the jugging room. 

The pressed mash is sold to farmers as pig feed and fertilizer.

After sampling the freshly pressed cider we spent some time in the gift shop where we bought a few items including warm maple donuts (the donuts were delicious).

After a full day we headed back home.

*** Just a note - A lot of our purchases were for gifts.  We’re not going to eat all of this!!

Back On The Road

After almost 5 months at Green Lake NFH we are back on the road and heading to Texas.

This has been our best summer volunteer experience.  Most of the time when we get close to time to leave an area we start getting “hitch itch.”  That never happened this summer.  Even though we didn’t blog much this summer we were very busy at the hatchery and took many fun trips on our off days.  The staff were incredibly nice and appreciative of our work and never hesitated to thank us for the help.

We packed up on Monday morning and were on the road by 8:00 a.m.  Just as we started to pull out it started sprinkling and it rained off and on through Maine, New Hampshire, all the way to Vermont.

 

We’re staying at the Moose Lake Campground in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.  It’s a small campground with small sites.  When we made our reservation we were told there was only one site left and it was 30 amp.  Campgrounds are hard to find in this area. Many of them have already closed for the season and the rest of them are full of folks coming to see the Fall colors on the maple trees.

We’ll be here four nights.  Stayed tuned - we have lots of things planned!

The Party’s Over, It’s Time To Go

Even though Saturday was our official last day of work, we had our going away party on Friday.  The whole staff was working that day and gave us a big luncheon.  We had grilled chicken, side dishes, and homemade apple pie.

They also all contributed to our gift which consisted of lots of Maine foods.  It was a wonderful party!

We’re already looking forward to getting back here next year.

We have a month to get to the Texas coast.  Stay tuned - our first stop is in Vermont.

The Official State Soft Drink of Maine

As we've spent our summer in Maine we have noted some food and drink items that are near and dear to the Mainiacs (citizens of Maine) hearts.  There is the obvious lobster, fiddleheads (young ferns) and the local candy, Needham's, that was featured in our September 20th blog.

But what about a curious soft drink called Moxie? We've seen bottles of it here and there, including at a favorite restaurant called "86 This" in downtown Ellsworth. We asked the staff at Green Lake Fish Hatchery about Moxie, and got some unenthusiastic reviews like "It's kind of strange" and "It's an acquired taste".

Moxie, Distinctively Different

During a recent visit to 86 This Teri decided to take a chance and bought this bottle of Moxie. She went for the regular "with sugar" version as she thought we should taste the real thing. So we did. And it is kind of strange. It has a little bit of root beer flavor, but is distinctly bitter.

It turns out that Moxie started as a patent medicine in the 1880's, and the basic "secret ingredient" was gentian root. Gentian root is claimed to cure all manner of ailments, but it also a common flavoring in bitters. In the 1920's Moxie claims to have outsold Coca-cola for a short period of time, but ultimately its popularity waned and it has become a regional beverage. In 2005 the State of Maine made Moxie the official state soft drink.

Here is my best attempt at modeling with a delicious bottle of Moxie. With this kind of publicity I expect they'll be selling out in no time!

Mark

One Last Job

You might remember when we first arrived at Green Lake we were feeding tiny little fish tiny little fish food in round green tanks.

Feeding fish earlier this summer.

These tiny little fish have grown quite a lot and have been moved into very large, outdoor tanks.

It has been several years since the inside tanks have been repainted and the staff decided this was the year to get started.

A couple of months ago the student intern started scraping and sanding the empty tanks.  

Fourteen tanks were targeted for a new paint job.  The staff was able to get one coat of paint on 10 tanks before other more pressing issues started taking up their time.

We were asked to complete the tanks and add a second coat.

We opened all the doors and placed fans all around for fresh air.  This is an epoxy paint that is safe for fish.

Epoxy is a two-part paint.  After mixing the two parts together the paint sits for about 45 minutes before it can be used.

We spent that time getting our supplies together and getting “suited up”.

My job was to get inside the tank with a brush and paint the drain and around the edges where a roller wouldn’t fit.

  

Mark would paint the bottom and sides.

Yep - your computer is not deceiving you - the paint really is that color!

Fourteen tanks completed

Newly painted tanks on the right.  Old paint on the left.

This was the last in a long list of jobs we’ve completed this summer.

Off to the Race(way)s!

During many of our volunteer gigs we end up doing projects that were not anticipated when we arrived. This is either because the staff didn't know what we could do, or because we didn't know what needed to be done.

The subject of concrete repair had never been brought up during our interview or during the first several weeks we were at the hatchery. But while power-washing some of the outdoor concrete pools we noticed that concrete in some of the drainage sumps had eroded away, leaving rough holes that caught old food and feces. Can you say STINKY??

Missing concrete in drainage sump

We brought the holes to the attention of the staff, and were told that they wanted them fixed but had to wait a year or two until a contract could be put together. We mentioned that we thought it was a pretty minor repair, and something that we could handle, so off we went to buy some patching material. 

Patching the hole with repair material

The next morning we made the repairs, and found ourselves with quite a bit of leftover material. It turns out that there is eroded concrete in many of the outdoor pools and indoor raceways, so we did a little more patching here and there to use up the remaining material. 

At this point the staff got the idea that perhaps we could fix the biggest of their concrete problems, which is a set of indoor raceways. Water running through the raceways over the decades has made the sides so rough that they couldn't be cleaned thoroughly and were no longer safe to use.

Existing raceway surface

It is hard to tell in the picture above, but the concrete below the waterline (the brown area) has eroded as much as 1/2 inch back, leaving a very sharp, rough surface. Now, instead of a 1 square foot concrete repair like the sump, Teri and I were looking at about 100 square feet!  We were a little hesitant to take it on, but agreed to give the first raceway a try, and then decide how to proceed. 

Cleaning the sides. 

The first step was to power-wash, brush and vacuum the raceways. There was a lot of loose dirt, sand, and rock on the walls and it all needed to be removed before repairs started. In some places the more we brushed the more the walls eroded, but we finally got them clean. 

The next step was to apply the skim coat material, which is a special mortar mix for thin, smooth repairs. This is a quick-setting, time-sensitive material, so no time for pictures!!  While Teri was up top mixing and providing me the material, I was down in the trench skimming it onto the sides. We were able to mix a couple of bags of material and get it spread before having to completely wash all of the mixing and troweling equipment down. Then we'd do it all again. We did one wall on a Saturday, and the other on the following Saturday. We find it easiest to do this kind of big, specialty project with fewer folks around to, umm... help!

Finished skimcoat repair

The picture above shows the finished repair. We returned the lower portion of the wall to a smooth, even surface. The next step was to paint the inside of the raceway with a special, fish-safe coating. It took over two months for the staff to decide on the appropriate coating, check the budget, get it ordered, etc. We really didn't think that we'd get a chance to finish this project before leaving at the end of September, but the coating finally arrived about mid-month. 

 Applying prime coat 

The first step was application of the primer coat. This was an odd material with the consistency of skim milk. It was finicky to apply, but we got it on and let it dry overnight. 

Applying top coat

The top coat was a much thicker rubber material. The coating manufacturer required three coats of the top coat over the primer. So it took us a couple of more days to finish the coating. 

The finished product turned out great, with nice flat walls and a thick durable coating. 

Here is a look at an "original" raceway next to the refinished raceway. The hatchery staff is really pleased and is hoping that we can refinish three additional raceways next summer. 

We have to let the coating cure for a full week before adding water and fish, so we won't be around for the filling. Hopefully everything works out as expected!

Mark