WORK AND TOUR IN LOUISIANA

 9 women from my church went to UMCOR Sager-Brown in Baldwin LA on November 9th to work for the week.

 Packing hygiene kits was the focus of the week.

 Boxes filled with 24 kits each and put on pallets.

 Then they were prayed over.

 I was still in NOMADS mode so I volunteered to help paint.

 I painted 8 of these yellow poles. Most of them needing two or three coats.

We didn't work on Friday, so we went to Avery Island.

 It is where they grow the peppers and manufacture Tabasco. It has been here over 150 years and owned and operated by the descendants of  Edmund Mclhenny, the inventor of it.. The museum was interesting. We then took a tour of all the buildings.

 The first stop was to learn about the peppers. They are hand picked.

 Next was the barrel museum which was very interesting.

 It was a self guided tour but at each place there were videos to watch.

 The mash is put into oak barrels. The lid is covered with salt. Each barrel had the date it was filled.

 The mash sits in the barrel for three years. The barrels on the side were dated Feb 2017.

 You walked in the blending room and you started coughing, the smell was very strong.

 They were bottling today. That number kept changing by 10.

 They were bottling the original red going to Australia.

 Some little bottles.

 At the store you could taste all the kinds and there was lots of fun things to buy. Of course all had something to say or do with Tabasco.

 We then drove around the island to the Jungle Garden. Pam and Noelene were are drivers on the trip so they checked out the map.

 Avery Island is a salt dome.

 The garden would be very pretty, at another time of year. The Chinese Gardens contain a Buddha statue dating back hundreds of years.

 Imagine Snowy egrets nested on the platforms. This helped save them from extinction. We didn't see any, but we did see a wild boar. This would be a beautiful place to visit in the spring.