Allan's space

This is the second longest fjord in Norway 179K from the the ocean an 8 hr sail in. Just a small town at the end very charming, a scenic cruise in, farms way up on the mountain you wonder how they get in & out. We did a bit of the tourist thing wandered around town, then took the small troll train for a tour, very interesting.

Embarkation was a bit of a free for all. They had signs up for priority boarding but after check in when the doors opened it was a rush for the door in no order. So much for your group # and boarding time. Up to our room which wasn’t ready, no problem we dropped off our carry on & headed up to the Lido. After lunch our bags were in our cabin, we unpacked, wandered around the ship then headed up to the aft pool for sail away. Our roll call group were going to meet on deck & have a drink for sail away. Nobody there, the weather was not the best, few people out & about so we had a couple of drinks took some pictures & headed inside. There was a crowd & a bit of a party around the inside pool.

After a good breakfast at the hotel it was off to a day of sight seeing. We started off on the hop on /off, did a harbour tour by boat, then off to get a close up of the Little Mermaid then a tour of an art museum, then back to the hotel, which took about 61/2 hr. After a rest we then went back out to visit Tivoli Gardens, had supper at the Beer Garden Bratwurst & beer for me & Marlane, Alexis had fries and then back to the hotel after another 3hr, so we had a full day. We’re all tried so should sleep good tonight. Tomorrow it’s off to board our ship.

And we are off on another adventure. We flew into Copenhagen two days early so we can do the tourist thing & see the sights. We flew into Amsterdam then a short flight to Copenhagen, took the train from the airport into town, then walked from the station to our hotel. After we got our room we all had a short nap because we had been up over 24 hrs didn’t get any sleep on the flight. We then went for a walk to get some fresh air & also had supper at an English Pub called Proud Mary. I know an English Pub in Denmark, there are lots of then here, we saw an English, Irish, & Scottish Pub all in the same block. It was an early night for all of us & tomorrow it will be off to see the sights. We have been here before but this time we have Alexis with us. The day after we board the ship for our cruise up the coast of Norway to the North Cape

The Kee is leaving for Kingston and the Great Lakes Maritime Museum. It closed like everything else during covid & never reopened. For the last couple of years there have been rumors that she was leaving and this week we finally know for sure. She will be missed by many. The volunteers spent thousands of hours on board lovingly restoring her.

It was an over cast day which set the mood for the occasion. Which is in sharp contrast to her arrival in June 2012.

We have started to boil sap to make Maple Syrup. On Friday and yesterday on Monday I started boiling down all the sap we had ready to go. We were starting to run out of room, our holding tank with about 450 liters was full, all the buckets we had were full 160 liters & the evaporator 100 liters was full. I boiled that down & on Monday we had another 200 liters ready and boiled all that down. So now we have about 30 liters of sap that is almost at the final stage, about 60% sugar that is ready to be boiled down for Maple Syrup. It takes 40 liters of sap to make one liter of syrup, so as you can see we have to boil a lot of sap, which is at 2% sugar and get all the water out before we get to Maple Syrup which is 66% sugar.

The process happens in three stages, sap coming out of the tree is at 2% sugar, the first long pan brings that up to 10% sugar, the next three small pans bring it up to 30% sugar, the final called the finishing pan brings it to 66% sugar, which is what Maple Syrup is. We have 54 taps which should give us 54 liters of Syrup, one liter per tap, these are about 24 taps into individual pails and the rest into a gravity line which empties into the big blue barrel at the Sugar Shack.

The season lasts for about 4-6 weeks Feb – March the season is over when the buds start to come out on the trees. The next week we have some more warm weather coming so we should get a good run of sap.

Here we are taking off Maple syrup from the finishing pan.

We are finished for the season at the Mill. We cut open four of the grain bins for storage. We got the conveyer belts that moved the grain into the bins running again. The Mill was powered by a water turbine which was located in the basement. In later years it was powered by electricity.

The volunteers are getting the Sugar Shack ready for next seasons harvest of Maple Syrup. We first have to clear brush so we can string wire along the path of were we are going to run the main line back to the evaporator. Then we run the line that carries the sap from the taps, tie those to the main line, then tighten everything up, make sure there is a 2% slope so everything runs down hill, make sure there are no sags in the line, all this took a couple of weeks because we only worked at it one day a week.

And after all that work in the course of which I got poison Ivy & stung by hornets we then have to tie all the lines together, the two main lines, the lines from the taps in the trees to the main line and it all comes together ending at the Sugar Shack. Come Feb-Mar we’ll tap our trees and make delicious Maple Syrup.

It’s that time of year again when the local fall fairs start. We enjoy going to the Coldwater fair again after a three break because of covid. The food, animals, people, it’s good to get back to normal. We really enjoy watching the horse pull, this years’ winner pulled 5325 lbs.

After a month of getting the pole ready to lift into place we finally had the crane come to lift it up. Before that could happen we had to do a few things to get it ready. We had to weld a support bracket to hold it up right, had to fit the bracket to the base of the pole, had to drill a hole for the bar so the sling could lift the pole.