This year Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery was blessed with the help of two multi-talented volunteer couples.

Jack and Esther Forrest returned from Sebring, Fla., to spend their third summer at the fish hatchery in East Orland, Maine. Esther handled our "meet and greet" station in our outreach and education center. Jack, who had a career in construction and carpentry before retirement, shared those talents with us again this summer.

Our second volunteer couple was Jack and Imogene Comer, who are also from Florida. Jack is also a carpenter. His wife worked in our library cataloguing new books and journals this summer while "the two Jacks" worked their magic on carpentry projects that significantly benefitted the hatchery, the Maine Fisheries Resources Office and the Maine Fisheries Program Complex.

Both of these retired volunteer couples have camped on the property in their motor home each summer in exchange for 40 hours per week of volunteer work.

Two of this summer's most visible projects are:

-- A sand shed to store salt or sand for use on our driveways and parking lots during winter. They built this from scrap wood that was accumulating at the station via shipping pallets, old wooden shipping frames and years of scrap clutter. Talk about a way to get rid of unwanted wooden shipping materials and create something valuable! Options could have included hauling away or burning this scrap wood but "the two Jacks" found an innovative way to recycle it.

-- A canoe storage shed that gave all of us more room. For $1,300 worth of plywood and shingles and $800 worth of poured concrete, we now have a secure building that will protect and house all seven canoes used for stocking plus a boat. All of the construction, shingling and staining was accomplished at no charge through volunteer labor. Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery got a $20,000 boat storage building for next to nothing!

NORTHEAST REGION, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE -- Conserving the Nature of the Northeast