Gleaner Weekly Tasks and our Explorations

You might think at the Gleaners we would only prepare vegetables but today we will show you some of the other jobs that happen weekly.

They have 1000 pans for the dehydrator which get washed 500 at a time. Annette got to be on the team of 4 that washed all those pans this week.

Three other volunteers had the job of washing the teflon sheets that go on the pans before the chopped veggies get spread. Here was another job that Annette helped with drying all those sheets after they have been washed. We had to wipe each teflon sheet with a towel and then put them in the dryer for about 5 minutes. We were working in a tiny laundry room so it felt like a sauna at times.

On Thursday a semi truck arrived to be loaded with the soup mix and they had 2 hours to do this job. Jim volunteered to help load the truck with couple other men. They stacked 1104 boxes of soup mix, with each box weighing anywhere from 35-50 lbs. The boxes were stacked about 7 ft. high in the 40 foot container. This load is headed first to the coast and then to Guatamala. In two weeks they will do another truck load like that.

Jim asked if he could help with some of their maintenance jobs so they gave him a job which he has been working at in his spare time and when it is not raining. He will be covering this structure with used sheet metal to protect their wood pile.

Since we arrived here two weeks ago we have seen how busy all the farmers are in the area. We have taken note of the pepper fields nearby mounded in nice rows with black plastic waiting for the right planting time. Then Saturday we witnessed them do the actual planting. They have a tractor pull a planter with 2 people on it and planting the peppers as the machine passes along the row.

On Saturday we headed to Vaseux Lake Birding Observatory where we enjoyed beautiful sunshine and sighting some birds.

After this we took a nice drive on a curvy road to Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory about 30 minutes from Oliver. After a visit with Annette's cousin last weekend who recommended a visit to this observatory. The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory is operated by Canada's National Research Council the country's premier research and technology organization. The hills surrounding Penticton BC's White Lake basin offer protection from man-made radio interference and make this location an ideal site for Canada's only radio astronomy observatory.

Astronomy originated with the study of the night's sky's visible light, a type of electromagnetic radiation. But this light, perceptible to the human eye, only represents a very small part of the universe's radiation. Radio astronomy, the study of naturally-ocurring radio emissions from celestial objects, provides us with an alternative view of the universe that we could not obtain any other way. Radio telescopes - radio antennas used individually or linked together in an array - detect these radio emissions, which have wavelengths about 1 million times longer than visible light.

CHIME - (The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) Chime is their newest and is a very unique instrument which is designed for a special purpose. It maps cosmic signals over the whole sky visible from Canada. The four 100 meter x 20 meter half pipes shown below are the telescope mirrors which focus radio waves onto a line of 1024 receivers. It is sensitive enough that it could detect a cell phone floating in space 20 times as far away as the moon. This is why we were told to turn off our cell phones during our visit.

As we walked from the parking area signage explained about the 640 meter line painted on the road representing the age of the universe. Giving details en-route of when different creation events happened finally coming to the point of man kind on earth. From this point to today was represented by a line 30 cm long. Kind of blows your mind about creation and the Bibles statement that to God one day is like a thousand years. These telescopes are recording events that happened ions ago and these radio waves are only now reaching earth.

Many of you are hearing about the flooding that is happening in the interior of BC. There is major flooding at Grand Forks BC which is 150 kms. away and Osoyoos 20 kms south of us has flooding on the flood plain areas. And locally here in Oliver we see some flooding streams that they are constantly working on by sandbagging to protect the farmland and housing close by. But we can still see snow in the high elevations and the warm temperatures brings about fast melting and it all has to come down.