I hope 2019 is off to a great start for all of you. I sit here this afternoon looking across a beautiful ice and snow covered lake. The lake is now dotted with bob houses. We saw a couple lucky fishermen catch good sized brown trout! With the snow of the past couple days, there have been some snowmobiles zooming across the lake. I have had fun skating on the lake with 2 of my grandchildren and may be taking a walk with my snowshoes over the weekend if these howling winds subside. Well I hope I have painted a picture of the lake as it is enjoyed in the winter! It is a busy place. The web cam on the WLA website is down at the moment, but hopefully it will be reset soon and you can take a look to see some of the activity. We lost power for a couple hours on Wednesday morning, thus a reset is necessary.
I wanted to pass along a thank you we received from the Franklin Opera House. The Festival of Trees that was held in December, was their most successful fundraising effort to date! As mentioned in my December email, the WLA donated a tree and and a $100 gift card to Hannaford. The Opera House was most appreciative and the tree was won by Alicia Hakins. I actually was helping with the pickup of trees and was able to assist Alicia in getting the tree to her vehicle. She was very excited to take it home to her family! Please see the attached letter from the Opera House.
I received a note from Sara Steiner, who is our contact person at DES. She runs VLAP, which stands for Volunteer Lake Assessment Program. These volunteers test the waters of over 170 lakes in NH. Mark Lorenze, Brian Campbell and Jeff Perkins are the volunteers for our lake. They test the lake water 3-4 times per summer season. I joined them in August to see what testing entails. It was very interesting. Mark and Brian have been doing the testing for many years and Jeff has joined them the past 2 summers. This is an important program to be a part of and we thank them for their time and efforts. It is a way for us to monitor the health of our lake and continue to be educated on how to maintain or improve its health. Sara included an article that could be shared. I have attached it as well. Her intern for the summer wrote the article entitled A day with a VLAP employee.
The sales of WLA calendars went very well. We made a total of $614.90, the most we have made with this project. Thank you to everyone who purchased a calendar. In looking ahead to next year’s calendar, we would like to make it a contest again. We are thinking of a theme that would encompass all seasons on the lake. Therefore, if you are here at any time during the winter/spring/summer/fall months, please get those cameras out and take some awesome photos for submission. There will be more details in the Spring newsletter.
Lastly, Mark and Amy Field are new property owners on the lake and have joined the WLA, Mark has volunteered to redesign the WLA web site. If you visit the site regularly or if you have never gone to the web site, take a look and see is it easy to navigate, is there information missing that you would like to see on it, what do you like or dislike about it and any other comments you have would be great. Please send me your feedback.
Stay warm if you are here in the cold and if you are somewhere warm enjoy!
Happy winter and take care,
Val