05 Mar Thu 2009
Truckin'
Erica's friend gave us her old truck and it is a great addition to the farm. It arrived rather noisily, but a new exhaust clamp and gasket took care of that.
Now Erica can take the kids out and about on farm errands. Since this has an extended cab, there is actually room for us all. We won't be hauling cordwood in this one, but we still have the big truck for such jobs. We were able to get farm plates at a reduced price (they still do that here in CT) and we ordered a new logo for the sides.
I spend a lot of time looking for exactly the same font as on our other truck, but this was the closest that I could find.
We've already put the truck to use picking up the pork from the butcher's, picking up our pig feed, and gathering maple syrup. We use three 36 gallon totes to haul the syrup sap (oops) back from our new sugar bush. The totes fit in perfectly and we can drive the truck within meters of our evaporator for easy access to the sap.
It was pretty cold when Erica and Violet put the new logo on the doors. I am glad that this is a job that Erica takes. I have no patience for these vinyl stickers and would probably end up with the "C" stuck to the "R" below it.
You can see that Violet has a glove off...moments before she took in a rather large splinter.
After a few minutes off to remove the splinter, the truck was finished.
Here are the aforementioned totes full of fresh sap brought in from the sugarbush.
Finally, Liev takes a little time off from making mud cakes with his sister to lend a hand filtering the sap:
We've finished off this past weekend's batch and have about 3 gallons of syrup or so.