Work Week September 22 - 25, 2009

O.K. This software stinks! It will never put things where I want them. So we'll do Friday first. Jonathan will get a chuckle out of this one. Yes that is me and this little one man hydraulic lift.
It will raise me up over 25 feet so I can change burned out HP Sodium lamps in the parking lot lights. I case you didn't recall that is about 21 feet higher than I would normally want to be!


On Tuesday night they had a commerative fireside with Elder Cook an area 70 general authority to remember the night that the Prophet Joseph Smith climbed the Hill Cumorah to retreive the gold plates. We had to set up around 500 chairs in the Pageant Study Shelter! Left to right, Elder Picanco, Parkerson, Brother Chase Hamlin, and Elder Huffaker.

Sisters Huffaker, Parkerson & Picanco.

Oh How Lovely Was The Morning! Wednesday morning on the driveway into work Sister Parkerson caught this beautiful picture of the sun's rays coming through the trees.

Our huge lettuce plant. Sister P. has potted it so we can bring it in when it gets too cold.

Sister P. picks corn from the 16' tall corn stalks.

Must be Texas corn in New York!

Sisters Parkerson & Huffaker geing ready to "pressure wash" the side of one of the apartment buildings where the missionaries live. Sister Semadeni made chocolate pumpkin brownies for our sisters.

Oh Beans!

For anyone interested in machines as Elder Parkerson is this might be an interesting blog entry. On Monday morning upon
arriving at work we discovered that the "harvesters" had arrived from the canning company with their giant machines. These machines are primarily designed to harvest just string beans!
This picture shows the side discharge shoots.

This is a huge "dump cart". The beans are often offloaded from the hopper on the harvester into this cart drawn by a tractor back to a waiting open top 40' trailer.

I got to get up into one of these interesting machines to get a basic explanation of how they work. There is a 6" brush on the bottom front which "sweeps" the bean plants towards the opening. Just under the "deck" are rows of fingers which tear up the whole bean plant, leaves, pods and all. The beans mostly fall off the plant and the whole mess drops onto a conveyor belt which runs under very large fan. The air currents from the fan lift up the lighter bean leaves and plant, grind it up and discharge it out the side. The string beans then continue up the conveyor belt into the hopper on the back of the harvester.

Several of these 40' long open top tractor trailer's left the Hill Cumorah property destined for the big cannery in Geneva. They will be canned up there and marketed under most of the

common product labels with which we are all familiar. Saw all the same beans going into the truck but cannot tell you what the difference will be between the Libby's string beans and the Great Value string beans. I guess you'll have to taste the difference between the beans which all came from the same truck?

Harvesters out in the fields early in the morning. I have no idea how many acres are here just that the fields run for over a mile!

September 11 - 14

We had a great weekend with Betty & Vern Knowlton from New Hampshire. We visited the Hill Cumorah and the statue of Moroni.
Got to tour the Grandin Print shop where the first copy of the Book of Mormon was printed, the Joseph Smith Farm and Sacred Grove and the Peter Whitmer Farm in Fayette.

We also visited the Palmyra Inn where there is a very interesting small museum containing artifacts from New York and Ohio. Many of them date back to Book of Mormon times and some artifacts appear to be Hebrew in origin.

Elder and Sister Parkerson in front of the statue of Moroni on the top of Hill Cumorah.

One of the other interesting activities we got to do with the Knowlton's and Kate & John was a
visit to the Bishops Storehouse which is close by. My friend, Elder Green, here is giving us a tour.
The organization of the Lord's Church is evident in everything in which we are involved. I think the church has recently made available to non-members the opportunity to come and purchase food for home storage at these Bishops Storehouse canneries.

Although we don't have much room for storage, Sister Parkerson has been storing up, canning, freezing and drying food for winter. Given our economy it may well be needed this winter.

Before leaving Kate & mom decided to compare heights. Mom is decidedly shorter. We enjoyed every one's visit so much. We enjoy sharing the history and sites of Western New York. Our love to you all.

Elder & Sister Parkerson

September 5 - 14, 2009

It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Things have
slowed a little bit. Sister Parkerson and I had time to go on
a reconnaissance mission to look for fruit trees with fruit we can
pick and can for winter. It may be a long cold winter with higher food prices

It takes a little getting used to but
these 4 wheelers are a lot of fun
and can go many places.

( Yah I know this is missionary
work!)








Sisters Parkerson and Huffaker
spent some time raking around the
Joseph Smith Farm.






Elders Flynn and Boudreau also helped.
Today Elder Jensen from the 70 was here
to evaluate the Sacred Grove and determine
if it needed any work to be more safe.




The Joseph Smith Frame home in the background. This is the home that Joseph's brother "Alvin" was building when he died, leaving behind his family and fiancee.






Taking a break!






The old wagon in the lean to shed behind the threshing barn on the Joseph Smith Farm.

We had a great weekend last weekend! Our dear friends Betty & Vern Knowlton from Loudon, New Hampshire came for a visit. As a double bonus Katie & John came down from Vermont. We had a really good time visiting the sites. We visited the Peter Whitmer

Farm in Fayette where the church was organized. We also went to Sauders. If you come here for a visit you must go to Sauders. It is an old Mennonite Country Store with all kinds of canned goods made "down on the farm". It is unique to say the least. B&V got us a bushel of pears to can. We also visited the Hill Cumorah Visitor center. The weather was beautiful.

Week of September 04, 2009 Activity

Its been another interesting week here in Palmyra.
We have a 30,000 gallon underground tank on the top of the Hill Cumorah. We have 2-50,000 gallon underground tanks in the yard of our offices. We have an acre +/- pond that is used primarily to fill the two tanks and they in turn have a pump the water to the top of the hill. Now you know that it never rains but what it pours so we have 1) a severe algae problem in the pond and 2) the primary pump in the pond quit! Here Mark and John get ready to swim in the swamp like pond to find and recover the pump.

Diving right in no one envied Mark today.

He was able to tie a rope onto the pump. We couldn't even budge it by hand. So we managed to get Elder Murphy and a 4X4 to hook onto the rope and pull it as far as the shore where we still couldn't move it.

I was elected to get the big backhoe so we could tie the rope onto the bucket and lift it out of the pond. Trick was not to let the backhoe enter the pond and to be careful enough to not kill Mark while getting a grip on the pump.

Once hooked on we were able to lift it free of the pond and swing it onto the lawn.

We discovered that it must weigh in excess of 250 lbs. It is a three stage, 10 horsepower pump with a capacity of 250 gallons per minute. Now all we have to do is figure a way to redesign a system to pump water back into the holding tanks cause there is no way we are going to get another pump this size back on the bottom of the pond. More later.....

Its a nasty job but some one's got to do it! Temple President's home has had a serious yellow jacket problem all summer. Several of us have been over to spray but the yellow jackets keep coming back. I got the work order this time and decided to investigate further. I wound up actually pulling the soffit down from the eves to disclose a huge yellow jacket nest. Sprayed it, dusted it, knocked it to the ground and bagged it. Done!! Only got stung in the head 6 times. not to bad considering the number of insects in the air. I don't think they'll be back.

Oh yeah. Its the 4th of September and the birthday girl celebrates another year. She got a little surprise as she had hinted at what she would like before we leave from our mission but you know me, I'd shot that down.

She's wanted this printed afghan that she saw very much.

She's just a little excited. So we had to take pictures, pictures, pictures.....

The End of August

What a great week. We had lots of great adventures this week.

Linda was home on her P-day, August 20th and as usual, she ran out to greet the visitors to the site. This time she got a special surprise!

The visitors happened to be Sister Shirley Rook and her grand-daughters. Sister Rook is the great-great grand-daughter of none other than Martin Harris! They had a wonderful visit and Sister Parkerson was able to get some more first hand knowledge of Martin from his own family. They went for a tour of our apartment and her grand-daughters went into the field stone lined cellar, which would have been the original cellar of Martin Harris. It was a moving event for all.

Yes the berries are still coming. They are coming so fast we don't have time to heal up between pickings! You know who really enjoys berry picking!!!

As you can see here many of the berries are extra-large. Sister Parkerson has made some mighty fine seedless blackberry jam.

The bushes are loaded and sometimes you have to get down and crawl under the bushes to get inside the berry patch where the big ones are.

We showed Elder Murphy, our young friend where our secret patch is. I'm not worried as he goes home in October.....

O.K. This is not enhanced or trick photography! For anyone who knows me and cannot believe - YES that is me. I got this work order this week to replace the burned out floodlight that illuminates the gold dome of the historic Fayette Chapel. The chapel is located on the grounds of the Whitmer Farm where the cabin is that the Church was organized in, in 1830.

You can zoom in on it to see that it is me up there. I had to get on a ladder to the first level, walk up a second level of roof over the visitors center, pause for a prayer, then ascend up to the top of the chapel roof to change the lamp. Somehow I made it back down. Prayer answered.

This is Brother Chapman and his family. His wife June, and son John and daughter Stephanie. They invited us to a dinner with them at a ward camp out held at the Camp Zion here at the hill. It was miserable weather but a great evening was enjoyed with Mark and his family. Really nice people and Mark is an excellent "dutch oven" chef. We had baked chicken and stuffing, steamed vegetables and an apple dump cake.