Month: November 2017

I toured a cider mill. A cider mill is where apple cider is made. 

I also liked watching a donut machine make apple cider donuts. A worker pours sticky dough into a bowl that mixes the dough more and then squeezes it out into donut shapes but the donut shapes go directly into hot oil. The donuts cook by the hot oil as they move through the trough of oil. When they are done cooking they dump out of the oil into a pile!

They use a secret recipe to make the donuts. I learned that during the busy season over 800 dozen donuts are made and sold! This sounds like a lot. Mama used her calculator to show exactly how many that is. It is 800 groups of 12 and that is 9,600! That is a LOT of donuts! 

I toured an ice cream factory. This ice cream factory makes ice cream that has big chunks of sweet things in it like chocolate or cookies. Sometimes they stop making a flavor and that is called discontinued. There was a cemetery of the discontinued flavors that I looked at. I liked coming here because I like to see factories and I also like ice cream. If you work here you get to take three pints home with you each day! Mostly this factory gives tours so people will buy more ice cream. It is pretty much just like advertising so you give your money to them, but I still liked learning about all the steps and how very cold the room is for storing the ice cream. This company has 6 factories in different spots in the world but this is the original one.

I visited a Jersey Cow Farm. Jersey cows are these brown ones. I learned that they have the most butterfat in their milk so their milk is used a lot in making cheese.

I got to brush the hair of the cows with a brush. The cows outside in the pasture were young and curious. They ran over to me and got very close to my face and then rubbed their faces on my boots! It was like they were grooming me. 

These cows can pee enough each day to fill an entire bathtub and poop 65 pounds of poop each day.  That is more poop than my entire body weighs. 

 I learned how chocolate used to be made over 200 years ago. They would roll a rolling pin (but it’s more like a block of wood) over the chocolate beans and other ingredients. Chocolate used to be made without sugar. I think that is because sugar was scarce. Scarce means not a lot is available. Now chocolate has sugar in it. 

This state I went to is called Vermont. 
When I go to different states there are sometimes different animals that cross the road for cars to watch out for, different foods, different animals that can be found on hikes, different trees, different accents in the people speaking, different bugs, and probably other differences I can’t think of but are true.

I went on a tiny hike and saw this sign when I started:

This Caution part about the cows made Mama and Daddy laugh so hard. I think they laughed because the sign said the cows are harmless but may be friendly or timid and that is not usually what a sign says after “but” when it is about animals. 

I also am going to find out what a Fisher Cat is. 

I learned all about how maple syrup is made and how much work it takes to make it. Right now it is not maple syrup season but I still was able to see all the equipment and taste four types of it. I liked all of it but especially the darker syrups. 

So far I have tried maple syrup candy and it was VERY sweet. My car seat has a little cup holder on my left and right side. In the left side I have a V8 that I haven’t had yet and on the right side I stored my piece of maple syrup candy. It was about half of an inch sized and I took mouse-sized nibbles and made it last a VERY long time. I also tried Maple Seltzer Water. It was not very sweet and it was bubbly and dizzy and just a little bit sweet, but not sweet like a soda. 

The most unusual thing to learn was that it takes 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup.

These are alpacas. They are very soft. Their hair can grow to be anywhere from 8 inches long all the way to 24 inches long. A regular ruler is 12 inches long so that would be like two rulers and that is pretty long for animal hair.  To get the alpaca’s hair, people shave them with clippers like is done with sheep. I hope that the people who do this are gentle. I think that alpacas are related to llamas, like cousins. 

This one got close to my face and mama said to not kiss the alpaca. She thought it might touch me with its teeth. It did get pretty close to my mouth… but I think this was because I had been eating popcorn!

When one alpaca thinks you might have food, all the alpacas come toward you. I think alpacas look a little bit like poodles.

I am in a new state. It is called New Hampshire. I saw a “Welcome to New Hampshire” sign when I got inside this state. It said “Live Free or Die!” Daddy and I talked about what that meant.  I also saw a sign for “Moose Crossing” and I have seen a lot of signs about animals crossing while driving through the United States but this is maybe the first time I’ve seen it for this animal.

The leaves in the trees are all beautiful oranges, reds, and browns in New Hampshire. 

I am a big sister now. My sister was supposed to be born on one of the best days of the year… HALLOWEEN! But she had to be born early because she has a piece of her esophagus missing. She is getting her throat fixed in the hospital by having surgeries. She has been here for three weeks and since she was born she has had three surgeries and will have another surgery again next week.  The area she is in the hospital is called the NICU and it’s all small babies. I love the nurses here, they are all very smart and kind. I also really like my sister’s doctor. He talks to me too, not just my parents and he is funny.  He is helping my sister a lot and he is called a surgeon. I know that he drives a motorcycle because once I saw him outside, leaving the hospital and he had a helmet and rainy motorcycle clothes.  Before one of her surgeries he talked to us and I noticed he didn’t have a lid on his coffee.  Mama said this is because he is confident in himself. 

I went to an improv class. Improv is where you are on stage and you don’t decide what you are going to until you’re right on the stage. Improv can be funny and usually the improv I see is funny but I know that if you have an instrument you also can do improv and improv is a short way of saying improvisation.  It just means you decide as you go along. Improv is a good way to learn to not be shy and to try new things really fast! My dad does the funny kind of improv and he likes it a lot. 

I went to a theater performance and brought my Peppa Pig stuffed animal. I had treated her with some gauze, bandages, and IV tubes that I got from a real NICU. A lot of people looked at my Peppa Pig, probably because this is not usually how Peppa Pig looks. I liked this show a lot. One thing that was not so great was that I noticed a lot of kids talked during the performance. I know that’s not really polite to do. The girl who sat in front of me did not actually sit in her seat. She actually stood on her seat.