Harvesting potatoes at Blue Bay Farms Ltd.

After a lot of wet weather, the harvesting has finally started.

Here are some pictures of the harvest. We have had great weather this week and are getting along great. These two pictures show the harvester and truck being loaded.

This next picture is of the wind rowers, the one on the right takes four rows and delivers them between the two rows that the harvester picks up. The wind rower on the right flips two rows in from the other side. That makes eight rows for the harvest to pick up. You can see it in the back ground.

When both wind rowers have done their job, this is what is left for the harvester to pick up. This field is about 85 acres.

After the harvester goes by, nothing left. You can see the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the back ground.

And here are the potatoes, it is what its all about.

Close up of the four row wind rower. You can see the potatoes coming off the conveyor in the back.

A look at the inside of the truck box. This box holds about 32,000 lbs of potatoes when it is full.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of harvesting potatoes on PEI.

Mount Washington

Finally made some time to update my blog. As promised, here is a more detailed story about going up to the top of Mount Washington using the Cog Railway. It was one of those trips that you only make once in a lifetime. It was very interesting. The Cog Railway opened in 1869 and used wood fired boilers for the first forty years. Then they switched over to coal.

This picture shows one of the newer models that runs on Bio Diesel. They manufacture these engines right on the premises. Powered by a 600HP John Deere engine., running on hydraulic motors. See picture below.

Nice view of the engine.

Here is a good picture of the track. The middle part is where the drive cog of the engine goes in, see next picture.

Next few pictures show the grade that the train goes up on. You can see the next train coming down the mountain. Returning passengers that had gone up earlier. It takes about 45 minutes to make the commute. and then we spent about 55 minutes on top of the mountain. And then 45 minutes to go down. On the downward trip, the brakeman controls the brakes on the passenger car. Otherwise the engine would not be able to keep it slowed down enough.

This is one of the steepest parts, where the grade was about 37 percent. We stood in the isle of the train and leaned forward. Was it ever comical, just ask the people that were there. Caleb had tears in his eyes he was laughing so hard.Here is a look back down the mountain. The halfway house on the left, the water tower below that and the station just beyond.Almost at the top, we came across the Appalachian Trail. Those little piles of rock are the trail markers. There were people hiking on it as we went by.On top of the world. The view was awesome. It was reasonably clear, visibility about two hundred miles we were told.

And the crew that did the trip. You definitely needed a jacket on topside.

from left to right: Randall, Pete and Kayla, Caleb in foreground, Mary, Jordan, Rebecca and Tim. Fun was had by all.

Hope you enjoyed the trip......................

Birthday/ vacation...........

Our time on vacation.

Well, after many days on the road and having lots of fun, we are glad to be home again. After my birthday on June 10, I find out that one of the presents was a trip with the whole family to a vacation town in the State of Maine. Old Orchard Beach. We had a great time while there. Here are some of the pictures.
It was nice and sunny on the first few days and really warm. We took advantage of that by going to the beach. A five minute walk from the house we stayed in. The water was very cold, but that didn't stop the younger kids from going in. Damaris in the middle, Caleb on the left and Micaiah on the right.

The next picture picture is of the older ones playing a game in the kitchen. The house was huge, there was enough room for all of us and then some.
One evening Jordan got the charcoal BBQ going and we did smores on it. We were not allowed to have a camp fire in the yard, so we made it work with the Barby Q , it worked great, here is a picture with me and the girls enjoying some good smores.
We also spend a day at the Kittery Outlet Stores. A special place for teens to get cheap brand name clothes. But we also found a store we liked in particular. The Lindt Chocolate Outlet store. One lb of Lindt chocolates for 7.50 US. You can't go wrong with that.
The next day we went To Mount Washington for the day. Not all of us went, but here is a picture of the crew that went up. I will share more pictures of that adventure later. The view was awesome. Pictures may tell you a thousand words each, but they are very inadequate for this instance.
The last one shows the guys at the waterfall that we hiked to. It was the same crew that went up the mountain. And they are from left to right, me, Mary, Caleb, Tim, Rebecca, Kayla, Pete and Jordan. The actual waterfall was on top of the part you can see behind us, altogether it was over a hundred feet high. It took about half an hour of hiking to get to, it was well worth it.
Well, I could go on and on, but that will have to wait until next time. It was great to be able to spend this time together. I have many more pictures and memories. The whole family worked well together this week. It was very rewarding. I am very Blessed to be a part of this family!

Thanks to all who made this event possible, you did a great job!

Planting potatoes......

Planting started this week, the rain finally let up enough to hit the fields. This picture was taken in front of our house. After all the rain we had, its hard to imagine that the dust would be flying this soon. Here you see Pete in the Case IH working up the fields.
This next two picture were taken at Wilson's. It is about 80 acres and these potatoes are going to enjoy the view of the ocean. At least for a little while.

And here is Klaas, planting away in this big field, trying to get to the other side. He did well, and planted about 45 acres today. At that rate we will be done in no time.
The next few pictures show how the sets go into the planter. It takes a lot of equipment to get the job done.The pipe on the far left is part of the fertilizer auger. It fills the planter with fertilizer.

Reggie, with a big smile on his face, fills the planter up with sets. It takes a crew of good people to get the job done right. And we are very blessed to have such a crew.

After today we are almost 1/3 done, so all is well in potato land. Will try and keep you up to date.

Coming soon.....spring

We are hopefully going to start planting tomorrow. And if possible, I want to take pictures and post some here. It has been fairly wet here this spring. After a winter with lots of snow and very little frost in the ground, we thought that we were in for an early spring. But that was not to be.

Trees are getting their leaves now and the service berry tree by our house is almost blooming.

Not sure if that is late or not. But I'm sure that in most parts of the country, they are already done blooming.

Last week we had a lot of rain and specially the fields that were plowed in the spring are going to need some extra time to dry out. And the grass is so green, we can hardly keep up mowing it between showers.

You can see there are not too many leaves on the sugar maple in front of the house.

Last picture is for all you older kids that think that Caleb and Damaris don't do chores.

Here is the proof that they can work really well together in the kitchen and work well together.

Hope you have a great long weekend.

Room makeover.........

I had to go back to some Christmas pictures of 2007 to find some before pictures. And I know its not Christmas yet. But its all I could find with some old pictures of the room.

Good times for sure.

And if you are not in the picture, don't feel bad, it wasn't on purpose.

And this is what it looked like after the carpet was stripped out.

It looks kinda bare, but it gets better. You know the saying. It has to get worse before it gets better. This is a good example. Elisabeth got brave and painted the fireplace. What do you think of the color? I think it goes well with the new carpet.
I think Damaris really likes it too, maybe she just likes having her cozy living room back.

The newly painted fireplace and the new TV cabinet thats built right in. Made a wall with shelves in the back for school books etc.

Everything is nicely put behind doors, except the sub. And the carpet is so nice and fluffy. Its really warm on the feet on the cold winter days, like we had lately. Well, hope you enjoyed the tour. Are you enjoying your spring already?

More Snow.........

Hello my faithful followers and those that just found me again. It has been a great winter here, as long as you like snow. Lots of snow.

We keep shoveling it higher and higher. Soon I will need a longer handle on my snow scoop.
We had a few days that it warmed up a bit. An icicle formed on the purgola in front of the house. It was huge and beautiful, the way the setting sun was shining on it. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that.
Even along the side of the road it is getting filled up with snow. All the way along from our place to the end of the road, the snow must be piled ten feet high. The snowplow really winged it back the last time.

If we get a lot of wind now, the road will be closed in no time. But what a beautiful winter it is. I just love it. Tim and I are going to do a poker run tomorrow. It is a snowmobile trip. You have to collect five playing card on the way. And the one with the best hand wins a prize. Well, time to get some sleep and rest up for the big trip.