I did a lot of planing on the tabletop. Although the surfaces align perfectly with the biscuit joiner, I didn’t get the top really flat; there’s a slight cup to it (in woodworking, “bow”, as in “and arrow” means the piece of wood has a curve lengthwise; “cup” means that there’s a curve crosswise.) I planed a lot. That’s why my arms are both sore on Tuesday. Even so, I didn’t finish getting it flat.
We looked in the “short hikes in the Lakes region” booklet (or whatever its name is) and found a candidate place to walk, Pineland Farms near Gray. We went down North Raymond Road, our usual route to Gray (and thence to Newton) but turned left at the crossroads to try to find the Shaker village. It’s actually just past the intersection with route 26. The road from the crossroads turns to dirt for a while, but it’s a good wide dirt road. The buildings of the Shaker community are beautiful, looking like a pristine untouched 19th century village. They offer tours of the place when they’re open, which they weren’t on Sunday, and a series of workshops on traditional crafts. We’re glad to know the way, because we’ll probably go to a workshop sometime. There were quantities of bobolink flying around a field just down the road from the center of the Shaker village where we turned the car around.
Pineland Farms used to be a state institution, School for the Feeble-Minded (which name dates it.) It’s now a working farm with all sorts of tours. There’s a visitor center selling beautiful Maine-made crafts & foods. I was interested to see the same ployes mix that I had got in Hannafords (and had made pancakes with this morning). It must be a bigger part of Maine culture than I realized.
Pineland has something like 17 miles of trails which are managed for cross-country skiing but not so great for walking. Maybe the thing was just that it was too warm a day, and the trails would be nice in spring or fall. We didn’t see any birds of note. The best part was a field of lupine growing on the slope above a small marshy area.
We found our way back through New Gloucester and Poland (stopping for frozen custard, naturally. They seem to have three flavors any day, vanilla, chocolate, and one that’s different every time (of course, it must repeat sometimes.) Arlene always gets chocolate. I always get the third one. This time the third one was butter creme, and it was not much special.)
I grilled a steak for supper. There was a barred owl calling when I went outside to check that the grill had cooled off.