open house

Open house party showcases months of work by Building Trades Program students

By Maria Pericozzi
May 18, 2017, 3:37pm

Clinton and Barbara Worthington held an open house party at their new home built by the Building Trades Program of the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership Batavia Campus on Thursday.

Around 70 students worked on the custom 2,200-square-foot home starting in September, learning technical skills in carpentry and cabinet making, residential wiring, plumbing, and heating.

Clinton said the project went very well and they are very pleased with the home.

Each year, students in the program build a house, getting hands-on experience in residential framing, door and window hanging, electrical wiring, heating systems, plumbing, siding, roofing, drywall installation, and trim on the interior and exterior. Students are also taught blueprint reading, and material codes and specifications.

Building Trades Program instructor Richard Monroe said the students are taught a set of transferable skills through the program.

“In our country, there is a huge skills gap,” Monroe said. “There are not enough trades people to fill the needs.”

Monroe said after students leave the program, some choose to step into postsecondary education. Others can directly go to work making around $75,000 a year.

In the spring of 2016, the Worthingtons decided to build a house at 4828 Ellicott Street Road in Batavia. They began meeting with the Building Trades Program weekly to create a calendar and develop plans for the house.

The Worthingtons designed the open floor plan for the house. Barbara said she likes to entertain, which inspired the plan.

One advantage to having the students building the house is the cost savings, Clinton said.

“We don’t have to pay the students for the labor, which was a huge advantage,” Clinton said. “The only disadvantage was the time frame.”

Clinton said the longer time frame gave them more time to shop.

“You can’t just go to the store and shop for all the stuff in one day,” he said.

Clinton said there were some limits to what they could do. He said if they wanted metal roofs or tile work they would have to subcontract.

“We like living in Batavia,” Clinton said. “[The students] needed a house to build and we needed a house to receive, so it worked out well.”

Sweet Time Farm opens Maple Weekend 2016

By Steve Ognibene
Mar 17, 2016, 12:44pm

Since age 12 Brad White, pictured above with his mom Marcia White, has had a passion for producing maple syrup, which started out to be something to try out and process in a small A-frame sugar house.

Sweet Time Farm grew from being their family hobby of just having a couple buckets to purchasing "Out on a Limb Maple Farm" from Shawn Dunning last year. Sweet Time is located at 5680 Webster Road, Wyoming, in Wyoming County.

Since taking ownership in 2015, Nicole and Brad White has to date 14,000 taps that cross lines between Genesee, Wyoming and Livingston counties.

This year has been a bit of a challenge with the warmer temperatures. Brad started tapping trees the first week January that took a couple weeks to produce maple syrup. It has not been a stellar year by any means, he said.

They have been running operations daily here at the farm where the sap runs to a 16,000-gallon holding tank then passes through filters, with reverse osmosis, and UV light to a another holding tank. Daily the family fires up the evaporator and boils 18,000 gallons or more per day depending on weather.

Currently he was getting 1-percent residual sugar coming from the taps. That's about half a crop in the present year, which takes 86 gallons to make a gallon of syrup. Ideally 2 percent is the 40-1 ratio needed to be most efficient.

The farm ships 90 percent out bulk wholesale in 55-gallon drums and the rest is sold at the store. They have a handful of farmers markets in the summer time that they supply nearby, which include Pully’s and Crnkovich's Farm Market in Le Roy, Hurd Orchards in Holley, The Farmer’s Wife in Pavillion, and Rob’s Farm market Spencerport.

When maple syrup season is done, the family moves on to pollenating fruit orchards when the apple blossoms come out. They lease out over 800 hives and use 150 hives themselves. The hives are typically stored down south in Georgia to keep them from the cold weather but they were stored up here this year.

Two Maple Weekends are scheduled with tours hosted at maple sugar houses across New York State: March 19 and 20; and April 2 and 3. Hosting farms will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. those dates.

At Sweet Time Maple Farm this Saturday, planned activities will include an Easter Egg hunt for kids, coloring contest, maple candy in shapes of Easter bunnies, plus more products offered in their store.

For more information go to: http://www.sweettimefarms.com/

Facebook Sweet-Time-Maple and their Maple Weekend event.

Photos: Mercy Flight & Mercy EMS hold annual open house

By Traci Turner
Jun 20, 2015, 8:42pm

Mercy Flight & Mercy Emergency Medical Services held their annual open house Saturday afternoon at Home Depot in Batavia to showcase services they provide to the community.

Fire departments and law enforcement agencies in the county participated, too.

Children enjoyed getting a close-up look at fire trucks, ambulances and Mercy Flight's helicopter. The City of Batavia Fire Department offered child safety checks. Batavia police did a demonstration on bike safety and state troopers did a rollover-accident simulation.

“The open house is basically for kids to see the backside of EMS, so if an ambulance or helicopter comes they are not afraid," Lynn O'Donnell, Mercy Flight & Mercy EMS outreach coordinator. "Kids get to meet the crew members so they know we are all a part of the community and here to help out."

In addition to the tours, they had a Chinese auction and sold merchandise and food to help raise money for Mercy Flight's mission sponsor program, which assists people who cannot afford to pay medical transportation bills.