As I write this (on Friday afternoon,) temperatures are soaring through the mid-50s under brilliant sunshine, and snow is melting fast. This is the final day of Project Period. At Andover Elementary and Middle School, where five students are serving as teachers' aids, hero worship is evident!
Recess is cause for unbridled euphoria. There's nothing like a good swing set.
Another project has been painting murals in science classrooms. Several of these artists are wearing full plastic suits.
Two nights ago, the evaporator pan in the sugar house got a little scorched, so Ryan and Jessy took it outside for a good cleaning.
With sub-freezing nights, and sunny, mild afternoons, we're experiencing ideal conditions for the maple sap runs. With 320 taps gravity feeding into a tank over at the Blackwater sugarbush, we have to gather twice a day.
While six kids gather sap and a few stoke the evaporator, Colin and Ryan use draw knives to strip bark off of pine poles that will support the deck at the new sauna next to Elbow Pond.
The scent of maple steam draws people into the sugar house. George uses a skim ladle to test the viscosity of liquid gold in the final boil chamber. This stuff is ready to be drawn!
At the machine shop, a team is building an electric go-kart and rebuilding the electric motorcycle. Here, using a force sensor wired to a laptop, they're measuring the thrust from a rocket motor they're planning to attach to the cart! Unfortunately, the force exceeded the parameters on the scale, so this experiment had to be repeated!
An ocean storm spinning in the North Atlantic sent immense breakers to the outer beaches of Cape Cod, entertaining our cycling project.
Now, for a weekend to decompress!
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