Week 2 at ECHO 2022

Saturday, January 25, 2022

Today has been another beautiful winter day in Fort Myers, FL. We have really had beautiful weather since arriving, with only an occasional shower. Watching the weather over the remainder of the country we are certainly concerned for everyone experiencing such a rough winter. Y’all be very careful as you are out and about!!

Last Saturday was the day we elected to celebrate Max’s birthday. So along with catching up on the laundry, we cooked up some of our red snapper that we brought from Gulf Shores. It was so good! Anne also made Max a from scratch vanilla pie using his Mom’s recipe. It was a first for her because we always just got our pie fix when we visited Juno. She was quite the pie maker. Thanks to Debra who shared the recipe and skill, pies will now be back in our diet – but not too often. Saturday afternoon we took a nice hike with two of our team members in one of the county parks. It was such a nice day.

Anne making a pie crust with remote technical support from Debra

The delicious vanilla pie brought back fond memories.

Enjoying one of the nearby hiking trails

As always, each morning starts with a team devotion.

We again began the week with devotion with the Echo family – such a good time of worship and song. After devotion we all headed back to work with Max and Anne back to the duck pond dock to meet with Elliott. Over the weekend it was decided that the dock looked so good that Echo wanted to replace all the wood above the deck of the dock. That meant we went back into demo mode. Marcia and Phil joined us to help unload all the new material and work on the rebuild. By Wednesday we were ready to install the new balusters and we set up an assembly line with Marcia pre-drilling, Anne starting the screws and Max and Phil installing. We were surprised at how fast that went and by Wednesday afternoon the deck was completed.

As with most things at ECHO we try to save hardware for re-purposing.

Phil and Marcia cutting the balusters for the dock

We predrilled the balusters to keep them from splitting when we installed them.

We installed over a hundred new balusters.

This was our audience for the dock project. Periodically they would burst into raucous laughter and we never knew what we had done that was so funny.

A soon as we finished the dock this ibis flew up, landed and posed for a picture. Then it pooped on the brand new railing and flew off.

A new assignment the team began this week was the cleaning out of the A-Frame house used by interns and other guests. At some point the second floor kitchen will be moved downstairs and the bedrooms on the first floor moved upstairs. Voni and Mary began that process of packing up everything into storage boxes and others helped out taking the furniture apart and except for the appliances everything is now in storage.

Mary and Voni spent much of the week packing the contents of the a-frame house. The house is scheduled for remodeling.

The beds were assembled with a wide variety of fasteners.

There were three rooms of bunk beds that had to be moved.

Our moving dream team showing the contents of the a-frame they packed and moved this week.

The team also built additional plant tables – these even larger than last weeks and dug and set new footing for a hoop house in the propagation area. Work continued on the large bridge with all the supporting beams being replaced. That was a huge, heavy job!

Susan and Kevin preparing tubes for more potting tables

The team built two more even longer potting tables.

The team also dug and set new footings for a hoop house

The bridge behind the visitor center has been a tough project because of its long span. It has seven beams – each made from two long 2x12s.

Max and Anne began the demo of a bathroom in the Appropriate Technology area with Elliott. All the fixtures and walls were removed. That was also a very physical job. Anne was a little stiff on Friday. All that is left to remove next week is the ceiling. Don’t think we will be involved in that rebuild, but we do enjoy demo.

Our task for Thursday was to remove the fixtures, walls and ceilings from this bathroom in the Appropriate Technology area so it can be rebuilt.

It took longer than we expected because the plywood walls were put up with lots of trim screws, then painted over.

By the end of the day we had the bathroom emptied and all the walls stripped.

The bathroom walls at the end of the day

For Anne Friday and much of today was spent on NOMADS business but she did take time this morning to host a cheese grits cooking school. With Marcia, Mary and Voni, Anne had fun showing them how southerners make cheese grits. Phil who said he didn’t like grits, decided the ladies cheese grits were pretty good. Anne also shared Juno’s sausage and grits recipe and the ladies are looking forward to giving that a try too. Some of the team also played some corn hole and ladder golf this afternoon. This is a great team. We are again enjoying our time at ECHO.