Ketchum – Page 15

April 17, 2013

Safety Drill

The Environment and Forestry Class that our nephew attends had a safety drill on their wood lot this past weekend. Their instructor, Mr. Dennis Flynn, stated the school has fire drills and lockdowns, he thought it was a good idea to have a simulated accident on the wood lot. Several area fire companies were invited to help with the drill. The fire fighters became familiar with the location of the wood lot and practiced extricating a victim from under a downed tree. More details on the wood lot drill can be seen at http://capitalregion.ynn.com/content/656128/first-responders-and-boces-s tudents-tr ain-for-logging-accidents/

Safety in the Work Pace

The safety conscious instructor got me thinking about safety in our plant. Here at Ketchum we have a very good safety record and work diligently to keep our manufacturing plant incident free. As a small business, we do not have the luxury of a full-time safety department. We rely on videos, borrowed from our insurance company, to add visual content to our training. Our April topics are hearing conservation and hand protection.

Hearing Conservation

We hire a company to bring their mobile testing van to our plant. After watching a video on hearing conservation and proper use of hearing protection, through a series of beeps our hearing is tested. The machines used in our manufacturing process are very loud and hearing protection is required. I believe the information we receive during training allows our employees to understand the benefits of wearing hearing protection.

Hand Protection

The punch presses at Ketchum stamp, cut and bend metal, as you can imagine, fingers and hands are no match for them. All of our presses have electronic guards, the presses will not operate if the guards are not in place. The metal coils have sharp edges and leather gloves help to keep fingers and hands laceration free.

A big “Thank You” to Mr. Flynn for teaching safety to our students and reminding all of us that safety requires education and practice.

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April 3, 2013December 10, 2018

Ketchum Tags On Location

Parlay Studios in New York, one of our new customers, is using Ketchum cattle neck tags to identify their expensive photography equipement. They were kind enough to send us a note on how well the tags are working for them.

Here at Parlay Studios we use your tags on film and photography shoots to label our vast equipment inventory. They are extremely useful in which they clearly label our gear and make it easier for our clients to differentiate our equipment from their own. Now they not only set us apart from every other equipment rental studio, but let everybody know where they can contact us to order their own!

EQ tags are not only informative but also stand out amongst a wide range of equipment in the production world. For example we have about 40 sandbags in our inventory, a necessity during any production, and each one is clearly tagged with our personalized EQ Tag.

There are no doubts as to which sandbags are ours and which belong to clients. This is a large help to our business because we no longer have to worry about missing gear. If someone borrows something they know exactly where to return it. Thank you so much for your amazing product!

I have also attached a few photographs that show how we use EQ Tags.

Thanks!

Victoria

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March 18, 2013

Happy Birthday Dad

Happy Birthday to our Dad Today. Although he’s no longer here to celebrate in person, he’s on our minds often and especially Today! In your honor Today, Dad, I’ll be enjoying a couple of your favorite chocolate chip cookies!

With five children in the house you can imagine how quickly a box of chocolate chip cookies can disappear. Every time I see a box of Freihofer Chocolate Chip cookies I smile and think of my Dad. He would “hide” his box of cookies in the same cupboard and even the dog knew the hiding spot. Our dog would be sound asleep in another room and would appear at my Dad’s feet waiting for her cookie as soon as he opened the cupboard! The rule was, we couldn’t have a cookie until the box was open. My Dad was a real joker and would sneak his hand in the side of the box without actually opening the box. The cookies would be half gone before we realized what was happening!

Our Dad, Jay, was the third generation to manage Ketchum. I think he may have been happier working on a farm. He loved being outdoors and enjoyed tinkering around the barn and working with the horses. He was my Grandfather’s only son and as these things sometimes go, sons are steered toward the family business.

Gary & I are lucky, we got to work with Dad for about 11 years before he became ill. We still feel his influence at Ketchum, customer service and our employees’ well being were important to him and I think that carries through with us Today. We strive to manufacture a quality product and maintain courteous customer relationships. Our employees are like family to us, most of them started working for my Father and some worked with my Grandfather. We sure do benefit from their knowledge and experience.

So in honor of our Dad’s Birthday, enjoy a chocolate chip cookie! I know I’m going to.

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March 13, 2013October 22, 2013

Our Ruffled Grouse

Early last fall we noticed a Ruffed Grouse (AKA Partridge) hanging around the house. These birds are more frequently heard than seen. You know, that“thump………thump………thump…thump..thump.thumpthumpthumpthump”, of the male beating his chest in an attempt to find himself a bride. This particular grouse was often seen wondering right next to the house. How cool is that? While on a walk, a few weeks after we first started seeing the grouse we found one, dead on the side of the road. We just assumed that was “our” grouse. An early winter snow revealed grouse tracks next to the house. And occasional sightings proved our assumption wrong.

In February of this year, Annemarie heard a huge “thud” at one of our windows. Her investigation finds a dead grouse. Remember the crow on the Bugs Bunny Show? The one that kept getting his “Nose cone stuck in his fuselage”. Well, once again, we were saddened to think that “our” grouse had died.

Yesterday afternoon, in a tree next to the house, sat our grouse (see picture). How lucky can we be? The family wants to name the bird “Jesus”, (pronounced “Hay-zues”) in reference to the Resurrection. I have a feeling this bird does not really know how blessed it is!

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March 12, 2013October 22, 2013

Jack Wax

When we were kids one of our favorite late winter, early spring treats was Jack Wax. Jack Wax is made from Maple syrup. We had to gather nice, clean snow; you don’t want dirt in your snack. It was much easier to set a pan on the porch and let the falling snow fill it up. However, Mother Nature does not always cooperate and sometimes we had to dig under the top crust to find clean snow. While we were outside our Mom would boil the Maple syrup to make it thicker, probably to the soft candy stage. When the syrup was just the right consistency, Mom would pour it in squiggly patterns on the pan of snow. We had to wait for it to cool, the hardest part, and then with tooth picks we got to pick up pieces of the maple candy.

The Maple Sugaring Season has started here in upstate New York. The nights are below freezing and the days are warm, so the sap travels up from the roots and back down again. There are commercial operations in our area that make Maple Syrup to sell. They have sugar houses with huge vats to boil the sap into syrup. There are also many hobbyists that gather sap and boil it down for their own use.

My Dad and brothers were hobbyists for a season. We were all very excited that they were going to make us Maple Syrup. They tapped some trees and gathered buckets of sap. They started a fire in our little fire pit in the back yard and put a huge pan on the grate to start boiling the sap. It takes forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. That’s a whole lot of time to spend feeding a fire and adding sap to the pan. There was also the nuisance of the ash that kept falling into the pan. My Dad did most of the actual work; my brothers got bored with watching the sap boil and ran off to play with their friends.

Now that I know how much time goes into making Maple Syrup, I appreciate the farmers that spend the early spring sugaring! Pure Maple Syrup is the best and it makes the best Jack Wax!

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