Grading potatoes at Blue Bay Farms Ltd.........

Here are some pictures of the grading line. The yellow belts in the front transport the cull potatoes to the cull bin. The red machine behind them sizes the potatoes in two sizes. Then the potatoes get washed again on the yellow(last) washer.
You can see the people grading in the back. After that the spuds go up this red elevator belt.

Here you can see the culls coming together. The hollow potatoes come out of the green pipe. Then they join the rest of the culls for their last ride into the cullbin.
Here you can see the guys, Reggie and Omke Marten, boxing up selects. In the background you will find Tante Tineke and Darlene grading at the Hagan sizer. Behind Darlene and in the next picture you get a closer look at the X-Ray unit.
This silver box is what it is all about. Not very big, but very expensive. It is amazing how fast it works. And it is very acurate as well. And here, the finished product rolls into the box. We are currently doing two different sizes of selects with the Hagan sizer, plus the hollows get kicked out at the first station. Station two and three are for select and station four kicks the bigger number one potatoes back into the regular tablestock line. Hope I didn't confuse you too much. Any questions, leave me a comment, and we will get back to you soon.
Thanks.

Spring is finaly here.....

It took a long time, but it is finaly here! Spring, warm weather, grass growing, flowers starting to push their way up. It was a great day.
Caleb, Damaris and I brushed Sapho today. She knows it is spring. Her hair is falling out in great heaps. She is our pet horse, and she is turning 33 years old at the end of the month. That is almost a hundred human years. The hair on her head is turning really grey. You can tell that she is getting old. She's not as fast as she used to be.
After taking Sapho's wintercoat off, or at least a part of it, we had a BBQ.
Complete with baked potatoes, steak and hot dogs. It sure was a feast. Then it was of to church again. We had a minister today from Ontario. He was here for the weekend, and preached two sermons today. If the congregation approves, then we might call him. Our regular minister is retiring at the end of July. So we need a new one. We wil see who God has in mind for us. May His will be done.

BLIZZARD...........

That is right, it turned out to be a snowstorm after all. Here are a few pictures to bring you up to date.

It seems kind of unreal, we didn't have a big storm like this all winter. And then to get one at the tailend. God sure has a good sense of humor.

The kids were having a blast outside. Altough Caleb didn't last too long. When the wind hits you, filled with ice pellets, well it hurts. I don't think he liked that very much.
I think it could be a while before we can go anywhere today. And then to think that the last couple of weeks all the snow was gone. We thought spring was here. Now it looks more like January.

We are definately going to remember this day. As the Easter Sunday Storm.
Well, we will have another cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy the storm.
God's blessings to all.

A Blizzard? In April?

What is up with that? Can you believe it?
Of course it may end up not to bad, and blow over. But it is snowing right now. I guess we will see tomorrow morning how bad it really was.
We're supposed to get between 20 and 30 cm of snow. And then high winds tomorrow morning. It doesn't look too bad out yet.
Well, we will update you on that later.
So long for now, and may God Bless you.

These pictures taken at one o'clock in the morning. we still don't think it is going to amount to much. We will see tomorrow.

Spring is here............

Hi to all of you again. A few pictures from PEI. They were taken April 3 'rd, this year. We put the taps in the week before. And it has been cold ever since.
So the trees are not running too fast yet. We had a few good days last week. Amanda took the daycare kids out to the woods. They helped me to put the taps in the trees. Hang the buckets, and so on. We only did a few trees. Of course the weather turned cold again right after. So nothing was running until a few days later. Then the whole group went back to collect the sap and boil it down on the stove in the kitchen. And what better way to finnish the day then pancakes, with fresh maple syrup.

The snow is almost gone now. But everythings is still brown and dead looking outside. There is not a whole lot of frost left in the ground. So,when the temperature does go up, everything should green up quick.
I hope you all are enjoying some time off, and wish you the best for the rest of the weekend.
This is a picture of the old well house that used to sit overtop of the old hand dug well by the house. It is slowly falling apart.
You can also see that the trees are still bare, and the grass is brown.

Caleb's new passion.....

Hi to all of you that are still checking once in a while.

It is appreciated.
As you can see, Caleb found a new hobby. When we were in Halifax recently, he found this kit where you had to go dig for gems in a block of plaster. The package came with some tools, including a pair of goggles, a little hammer and a chissel(wood).

He started with it as soon as we came home. After he found all his gems, he had to match them up with a sheet of pictures. So he learned quite a bit from it.
He even look up more info about rocks in the worldbook.

As you can see, he became quite the expert on anything to do with rocks around here.

Of course, the waterslide was a lot of fun too. We also enjoyed our visit to the Natural History Museum. There was a lot to learn about animals, plants and rocks.
Fun was had by all, and then it was back to work.

Spring is in the air.....

It is starting to warm up again. The days are getting longer and the time is changing tonight. A sure sign of spring. Amanda had a busy week in daycare. On Friday we had 16 people around the table. A lot of little mouths to feed. Lots of fun.


We also celebrated Pete's birthday a while ago. And this weekend he is having some friends over for a LAN party. For those of you that are not in the know about such events, it goes like this:
You invite your friends, tell them to come over and bring their computers. Then you hook them all up together. This makes a Local Area Network. Then you play games until you get very tired.

As you can see, it fills the room up pretty quick. The daycare room is not that big,just big enough. That leaves the rest of the house is fairly quiet. We had turnip stampot for supper tonight, with cheddar smokeys, was it ever good.
Just to let you know, Omke Jaap from Boksum ( Beppe's brother), is very sick. He can use all of our prayers. If you read this Klaske, can you give the family our best wishes? Thanks.
Don't forget about the time change tonight. An hour ahead.....