Three Plus Two

This Week

A cicada emerges from its exoskeleton.  Photo by Katydid.

This week we had a few "cool" days (in the 80's) so we spent more time outside.  The twins and Chipmunk fought ants and caught caterpillars.  One of the caterpillars they caught may have been a cabbage white caterpillar, and they spent an entire morning counting and pooling their money so they could buy cabbage to feed it.  Alas, the poor creature was "wounded" (or so I was told) and did not survive the day.  Katydid surreptitiously dumped it outside.  The boys were again focused on their ongoing battle with the billions of ants that populate our yard anyway.

 

Farmerboy tamed chickens.  I think the one he's holding may be named Domino.  She's a Dominque, a breed we remain partial to because they're like cats, only more useful. The chicken heading into the hole in the stall door is a Salmon Falverole affectionately known as "Runt".  As a chick she developed a lot later than the other birds, so much so that we thought there was something wrong with her and that we might have to cull her.  Instead we fed her vitamins.  She survived a dog attack and is now one of the chickens with the most interesting personality. 

(If you don't have chickens, you might not realize that they can have interesting personalities.  But some of them do.

Also, did you remember that our barn used to be a weird sort of mauve and tan color? Probably not, considering how little I've posted in the past year.  If you don't remember the weird mauve color it used to be, you won't know how much improved the green is.  Just trust me.)

FB also spent a considerable amount of time working on a Lego coral reef.  We finished reading Pagoo last week and this week we moved on to One Small Square: Coral Reef, mostly because it came in the mail finally and because when I looked inside, the word LEGO jumped out at me.  I'd ordered it from Winterpromise a long time ago, along with some other books, including Atlas of World History.  The other books came, but the Atlas and the One Small Square book did not.  For over a month.  (I was reading a blog post the other day in which the writer and various commenters led me to believe that this situation was not uncommon with Winterpromise.)  Anyway, at least it was a nice surprise to open a box with interesting books in it that I wasn't really expecting.  Coral Reef suggests using Legos to build corals, and of course that was all the encouragement FB needed.  Here you see staghorn coral being feasted upon by a Crown of Thorns Starfish, while a giant clam resides nearby, hiding a pearl.  Katydid told him clams didn't make pearls, but that didn't really seem to deter him.  I think he's claiming artistic license on this one.

Another interesting coral reef book from this week:  

It's all about the Great Barrier Reef.  And he watched this National Geographic Great Barrier Reef video.  And a bunch of the other videos on the same page, too.  And now I have heard that he wants to be a diver.  Which means he'll be wanting more swimming lessons, I guess.

It was a marine biology week for Katydid (age 12/7th-ish grade now) as well.  She seems to naturally concentrate on one subject for a while, then move on to the next one.  Over the course of a year, if left largely to her own devices, she usually acquires a pretty well-rounded education.  But if you looked at it on the level of the week, you might not see that.  This week was one of those weeks.  It seemed like every time I saw her working, she was working on marine biology.  She and FB played some of these BBC Sea Life games in addition to the work she did using Seaside Naturalist: A Guide to Study at the Seashore.  She told me she "accidentally" wrote a report while she was trying to take notes. 

Gareth works in a similar fashion, except intensified by several degrees.  This week was all about geography for him, considering that we got that new atlas and he's reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies , and writing and science fiction.  He and Katydid are working on the Other Worlds curriculum together.  He's also moving at a good pace through Jacobs Geometry with the aid of the Ask. Dr. Callahan DVDs and syllabus.  I must say that this is a relief to both of us after all the wrestling with algebra. This week was a further focus on deductive proof.

The younger boys had a "math morning" this week... I think it was Thursday, when it stormed all morning.  It wasn't planned; math was just what they wanted to work on. I do try to work on math daily with the K-3 set, but a) that's not usually a problem with Pop, who will tell you that he has a "math brain" and b) Thursday morning they just wanted to keep going with various mathematical activities.

I put out some pattern squares on the table.  I made a flower.  Nobody could guess what it was.  (Pop: "A satellite? Radar?") FB sat down and immediately put all the squares in a battle array and then informed his brothers of the rules to the game, if they should wish to play.  Of course they did, and of course they immediately protested that it wasn't fair because FB had all the soldiers. So... we spent some time figuring out how many soldiers FB actually had (beginning multiplication, multi-digit addition, regrouping, then division when he split them up).  I only had to break up a few fist fights before we were finished.

Boys.

We are doing lots of schooly stuff every day, but it is still summer time.  My garden this summer has become an abysmal failure -- well, "abysmal" may be a little strong, but it's a tempting word to use when squash bugs destroy half of everything you planted and even your green beans don't really bear.  Anyway, there are several Bartlett pear trees in our neighborhood, and they're getting ripe this time of year, and today one of our neighbors was cutting grass for another neighbor, who has a tree loaded with pears but doesn't use them, and he said we could have the pears if the kids would come get them.  So I sent the three oldest over with the cooler on wheels, and even though one cooler full was probably enough, our neighbor said the kids should dump their load and come back for more.  I'm not sure how much this is -- a bushel and a half? Two bushels? Or what I'm going to do with them either, considering that Bartlett pears tend to be hard as rocks.  But I figure they might be good for preserves or pear butter.

 

Linking up!

Weekly Wrap Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Country Diary: About dinner

Weather: Cloudy and damp after a hard rain overnight.  42 degrees at 8:30 and I don't think the temperature is going to budge too much over the course of the day.

At the feeder: We're late in getting our feeders set up this year, but Katydid managed to clean and fill most of them a few days ago.  We finally hung a collapsible feeder that holds 5 lbs of sunflower seeds.  The birds love it.  Right now I can count at least 6 goldfinches clinging just to the sides I can see.  A downy woodpecker flew away a few seconds ago, and yesterday we had a female cardinal.  The chickadees have also been out in force, 5 or 6 at a time, and our tufted titmice are back as well.  We need to get our suet feeders set up for the woodpeckers now.

In the garden:  In spite of it being November, we are still eating from the garden a little.  Well, brussels sprouts actually.

Here's what the plants look like "in the field".

And on the stalk.  When we went to the farm store last week, I was pleased to see that our brussel sprouts compared very favorably to theirs.  In fact, ours looked better.  (Ok, shameless bragging, but it was such a hard gardening year that I ought to be allowed to wallow in what few successes there were.)

(A brief feeder update... I need Katydid's binoculars... are those goldfinches or pine siskins out there???)

However, most of the garden is now planted to cover crop.  I think Andy used crimson clover, which stands up to our winters pretty well.  In the summer, the crop of choice is buckwheat, which he mows when it flowers so that it doesn't go to seed and become a weed.  We rotate our beds and try to leave some fallow every year.  After four years of cover cropping, adding compost, and 2 seasons of chickens, the soil has become a lot softer and easier to work.  (Not now, of course.  The ground freezes a little overnight, then thaws every morning so it's always a little muddy.)  The cover crop comes most in handy in the spring time when the snowmelt comes rushing down the hill.  Having a cover crop down instead of exposing bare dirt helps to retain our soil.

 
 An exciting photo of a mat of young crimson clover.  In the spring time, it blooms a vivid crimson.  It can be a little hard to get rid of, but it's not as invasive as, say, rye.

Or mint.  This is my own fault.  In desperation, because bugs and everything else were ruining my squash plants, I set out a chocolate mint plant beside them.  Now the plant itself is nowhere to be found, but I discovered this healthy specimen about 10 feet away in a different bed.

In the pantry:

• 2 pie pumpkins, which I will try to bake this weekend for pumpkin pie
• half an already baked pumpkin, which I will turn into pumpkin custard tonight (technically this is in the refrigerator)
• 6 Delicata squash
• All the Walla Walla onions have started to sprout.  They're not keepers.  The Cippolini onions are fine, though.
• A 5 gallon bucket of potatoes 3/4 full, mostly Yukon Gold, which we're eating through. 
• a half-bushel box of sweet potatoes from the farm store

 
  This is how I bake pumpkin and winter squash: with butter and maple syrup.  The butter and maple syrup form the stickiest candy ever on the bottom of the pan.  So it's important to spoon that up while it's still so hot that you burn your tongue on the spoon as you lean over the stove. Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course.

In the coop:

There are a lot fewer chickens in the coop these days.

But the ones in my freezer make really, really good chicken soup.

Using heritage breed chickens for meat was kind of a toss-up.  On the one hand, they were all small, the biggest not quite 5 lbs, and they took a long time just to get to that weight.  On the other hand, the taste is so much better even than the Cornish x Rock broilers raised on pasture.  The meat is firmer (probably because our chickens were free-range, not raised in chicken tractors, and breeds that were not bred to sit by the feeder and eat), the dark meat darker, and just in general, more flavorful.  But because it took so long to get them to butchering weight (such as it was), I'm not sure it was economical, and it was a lot of work.  

If you're keeping track at home, we used White Rocks and Delawares.  The Delawares were, in general, nicer than the White Rocks, which even Katydid looked forward to eating.

The turkeys turned out a little better in the weight department -- or at least the Naragansetts did.  They were butchered at the beginning of the week and are currently all jammed into the freezer ( all 6 of them.)  Everyone is a little sad that the turkeys are gone, I think, which was not the case with the meat chickens.  The Naragansett tom dressed out at 17 lbs, so he will be our Thanksgiving turkey.  Will we raise turkeys again?  I don't know.  The learning curve is pretty steep with turkeys.  They break your heart the way they die as poults, then they get interesting and curious personalities and the thought of eating them does not make you happy, and if you really want to pasture them, you have to clip their wings or they will fly 20 feet up in the trees at night or disappear with the wild turkeys.  But heritage turkeys are so much more beautiful and impressive than the typical Broad-Breasted White.  So -- I don't know.  I think we are going to take an animal breather next summer and just worry about the 23 laying hens we've got right now.

None of which are really laying at this point, however.  The old hens are moulting and should probably be turned into stewing hens, but they have all been named.  (Don't name your chickens.)  The new hens are not laying yet, or are laying in some incredibly out of the way spot I haven't discovered yet.  I've been buying "free-range" eggs to make up the difference, but their idea of "free-range" and my idea of "free-range" are obviously different:

 
  The orange yolks taste better, too, if you've never eaten an orange-yolked egg and you're wondering.

 

 

Week 6, part 1: Learning Outdoors

Good weather is at a premium these days, so this week -- as everyone was beginning to feel better -- we spent a lot of time outside. 

Fossil hunting...

Nature walks...

Katydid and Farmerboy found an interesting area in the woods nearly to the far edge of our field, full of rabbit warrens.  It's most interesting feature, though? A bee tree.  Farmerboy brought me up there to show me this morning.  I believe it's a wild honeybee hive.  Hopefully I'll be able to get a picture this week (or Katydid will take one.)  I've never seen a bee tree before, and of course with all the trouble bees are facing these days, I can't help but think that we've found something very, very special.  (And also... now I know why so many honeybees forage in our yard!)

The only problem is that The Bee Tree is one of the little boys' favorite books, and now they think we should go find some ladders and everyone we know to help us get the honey out of the tree.  Um... no.

Backyard Nature Study...

Jewelweed, also called Touch-Me-Not.  It's definitely a weed and a real nuisance in the vegetable garden, in spite of its delicate trumpet-shaped flowers (which hummingbirds love), but it's a great plant to teach kids about seed dispersal strategies.  When you touch a seed pod, the pod springs open and shoots its one, largish seed out into the air. 

And if you let a large stand of these plants grow up in your flowerbed, your kids will have a great time propagating even more.

This is what the pod looks like after it's been sprung.  The two sides curl away from the central core, releasing the seed, which looks like...

Then, of course, there are fall caterpillars:

Does anyone know what kind of caterpillar this is?  We have a lot of them, and someone has "misplaced" the guide.  Here's another view:

Country Diary Daybook: First Frost, First Day of Fall

I began this post on Monday, so I guess this is now a Days Book, isn't it?

FOR TODAY... Monday, September 20

 

Outside My Window... Crisp, sunny blue autumn sky, 42 degrees at 9 AM.  The maples are starting to really come into their color, with big patches of crimson, scarlet, and orange among the green.  We had our first frost yesterday morning.  I was awake at 4 AM and watched the temps dip: 37 to 36 to 35.  When the sun rose, the field across the street glittered yellow-under-white with a light frost.  (Wednesday morning: waking up to a light rain.)

 

 

In bloom: Goldenrod, New England aster, frost aster.  I like the pale lavender of the frost aster more than the bright purple of the New England asters, which remind me of a Crayola color.  The field is yellow and purple and while beautiful, sometimes reminds me of a high school football team.

 

(I had the camera on landscape setting, and I really don't think it does justice to the purple. Also, sorry about the smudge.)

 

(by Katydid)

 

 

In the garden: We picked ahead of the frost on Saturday: a few pounds of beans; whatever remaining tomatoes that hadn't gotten hit by blight or picked over by the bantams; some okra; a pound or so of peppers.  Now we switch to fall crops: leeks, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts.

 

(Cilantro I need to freeze)

 

In the barnyard: We're trying to find a processor to "do" our meat chickens.  But the processor we've heard about doesn't answer the phone.

 

I am thinking... that I wish this cold would go away so we could enjoy the weather!

 

I am thankful for... antibiotics.  Chipmunk is feeling much better now.  He's slept through the night for the past 2 nights.

 

From the learning rooms... Fossils, most likely.  The little boys have already been outside this morning, pounding on rocks with hammers.  They went out in the pajamas and bare feet, because they're still expecting it to be summer.  It didn't take long for them to realize it had gotten cold.

 

 

From the kitchen...  Last night I made these toffee bars that Jen recommended. YUM.  They're awesome.  And easy. I also made pesto with a bunch of basil we picked ahead of the frost.  I'd never had pesto before.  It was yummy, too.  But very green.  The boys tried it -- and liked it -- reluctantly.  After they made all sorts of unflattering comparisons as to what they thought it looked liked.  Boys.

 

Monday: Ratatouille to use up eggplant, peppers, zuchini, tomatoes.

Tuesday: Roast chicken? (Nope, salmon patties)

Just discovered yesterday that Weds, Fri, and Sat. are Ember Days.  Not sure what we'll be eating, really...

 

I am wearing... Pajamas again. (I know, it's 9 AM, but we're still getting over this cold.)

 

I am creating... Well, I wrote down some notes for a story, but I'm not sure about getting from A (writing down notes) to B (actually writing the story).  In typical Angela fashion, a page of notes will probably turn into a novel anyway. I also managed to draw in my sketchbook a little over the weekend -- trying to figure out shading and shadows.  Not doing so well either, but taking a deep breath and reminding myself that it will probably take me longer to figure out if I'm only working 5 minutes a day.  (Still, 5 minutes a day would be a great victory!)

 

 

I am going... to really work on laundry this week.  With all the sickness of last week, we are behind.   I think I am also going to sit down with myself and get a better handle on my time. 

 

I am reading... Crow Planet, by Linda Lynn Haupt.  I'm not enjoying this as much as I had hoped.  I like it when she writes about crows, but... there's something about the rest that is not grabbing me, and I'm not sure why. (Just finished it and am still not sure what didn't grab me about the book.  Can't put my finger on it.  Now I'm on to Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen.)

 

Also, thanks to Amy, I have subscribed to a bunch of people's shared items via google reader and thereby discovered many new blogs. :-) 

 

I am hoping... this stupid cold will end soon.  

 

I am hearing... Well, it's afternoon now and what I'm hearing is John Deere Action on TV, the sound of the dryer, Katydid coughing, Chipmunk playing with cars, and the occasional snore from Farmerboy who fell asleep on the floor.  Everyone's still recovering.  (And on Wednesday morning, everyone is sleeping late and it's quiet except for the tapping of my keys. I guess all the dirt everyone covered themselves in yesterday helped them sleep?)

 

 

Around the house...  What doesn't need to be done? I have to get a handle on the laundry first. (Working on this, bit by bit.)

 

One of my favorite things...  reading picture books that unexpectedly contain one of my boys' unconventional nicknames and watching their eyes light up.  (The book is Rattletrap Car and the name is "Jakie", without giving anything away ;-)

 

 

 

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... Well, seeing as how it's now the "rest of the week"... I'm still trying to get a better handle on my own time, but improving... we have a doctor's appointment to get to, the library, and Katydid and Gareth are both going to volunteer along with Andy at his company's annual 5K for charity this weekend.  This will also be the fourth of the past 5 weeks that Andy will be out of town.  Next week will make it 5 of 6. Still just trying to keep my head above water. 

 

 

Blackberry Picking

Last Saturday we went blackberry picking at "Scout Farm", a piece of land near us that is owned by the Boy Scouts.  The wild blackberries are free for the picking, and all Scout families can go up there whenever they like.  My kids (especially Chipmunk) tend to eat every single blackberry off our bushes as soon as they are picked, and I wanted to make a cobbler.  So we packed into the van and headed up to Scout Farm.

I have to warn you, though, the whole experience was less idyllic than those of you who live in the city or suburbs might assume.  In order to thoroughly understand this experience, you must add to these pictures the sounds of gunfire not as far away as you might hope (target practice, I am assuming); the grumbling noise of construction equipment; and the chug-chug of an old tractor cutting hay.  Mix them all together, and you have a nice "quiet" day in the country.

One of the first things we saw were these prints.  The picture doesn't do them justic, because they were big.  Bigger than dog prints.  Bear maybe??

This is a beaver pond, but we couldn't find the lodge.

Andy and Katydid did most of the picking.  I was busy keeping track of Chipmunk, and the boys decided they would rather "hunt bear" than pick blackberries, even with the promise of blackberry cobbler.

Fortunately, they did not find one. 

Katydid and I had more luck "hunting" with the camera.

Frost Aster, by Katydid.

On the way home, we saw a porcupine crossing the road, but Andy couldn't get a good picture.   Can you see him in the grass there, a big blob of white-tipped quills?

Landscapes from the way home...

And finally, blackberries for cobbler:

  

Not quite your average day

The other day I picked up an old favorite that I used to read every year, Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days: Share a Day With 30 Homeschooling Families.  Reading it reminded me of what homeschooling used to be like before blogs.  It also reminded me that I haven't done a "day in the life" post in a while.  As it happens, on the day I decided to do a day in the life post, it also turns out that it was "Day in the Life Week" at the Not Back to School Blog Hop over at My 3 Boybarians.  But, as usual, it took me a week to actually write this post (because I don't know how to do anything that isn't long and complicated) so I missed the deadline.  However, if any of you, dear readers, would like to share a "Back to School" day at your house, I would love to read it.  Just leave me a comment with the link!

A few notes before I start. 

1) This day was "not quite average" because Andy was home for the morning, and then left around lunchtime to go on a business trip for most of the week.  This happens often enough, though, that it's just not "quite" average.  This is just our second week of school, so we did do school today. 

2) I don't usually work this hard first thing in the morning.  Usually I'm on the computer for a little while.

Monday, August 24

7:15 AM  I wake up, later than I wanted to.  Chipmunk went to bed at 11 last night and I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I might have a touch of whatever Pip and Farmerboy had this weekend.  Thankfully, I feel decent this morning.  The little boys are getting up, and Andy takes care of them while I take a shower.

8:00 AM: The boys are eating breakfast when I come out.  Gareth is up, too.  I head down to Katydid's room to begin the process of getting her up. (Which sometimes takes a while.)  The little boys finish their breakfast and talk Andy into letting them watch Chased By Dinosaurs: "Most Dangerous Seas of All Time". Andy made me some eggs, and while I eat I switch around some binders so I can organize the originals of some new recordkeeping forms I handwrote over the weekend.  (The USB ports on our desktop are fried, and the software from our printer is incompatible with the Vista on my laptop.  So I have a copier, but no printer right now.)

 

My "desk": tea cup, garden/nature journal, planner, record-keeping book, new Circa notebook for forms, etc.

8:30 AM: Katydid finally comes out. Now everyone is watching Chased By Dinosaurs.  Andy wants to take some food from the garden we (along with our Little Flowers/ Blue Knights group) are growing for the Little Sisters of the Poor.  We have a couple bushels of potatoes to give this time, several pounds of zucchini and patty pan squash, and there's more zucchini out in the garden to pick.  I head out while everyone is occupied and come back with several more pounds of zuchinni.

9:00 AM: Time for prayers.  After prayers, Gareth and Katydid go to brush their teeth and start on their chores, which include feeding and watering all the poultry (turkeys, layers, meat chickens, and bantams).  All together, we have a total of 59 chickens right now, and 6 turkeys.  It takes a little while to get it all done.  The kids dawdle a while, so they're a bit late getting out.  When they come back in, they do their inside chores: collecting and sorting laundry, and wiping out the bathroom sinks for Katydid, and cleaning up the breakfast kitchen for Gareth.  Andy takes the time to take the trash out to the curb so I won't have to do it tomorrow.  Farmerboy is supposed to be picking up the family room, but right now he is involved in a complicated game of "Divers into Dangerous Seas."  Props for this game include all my pots and pans, and cameras, which the boys construct from various toys and tape:

(I help with the tape a little bit.)

9:30 AM: Pop used buttons (like the kind you sew) for his camera, and Chipmunk (who is sitting on the table) is enthralled.  He wants me to identify the colors of all the buttons.  The other three little boys are still involved in their diving game, so I sit down with Chipmunk and help him sort the buttons according to color.  On one of Pop's trips through the dining room, he notices what we are doing and wants to sort, too.  I don't have enough buttons for that, but I set him up with some dyed feathers. Chipmunk soon moves on to pouring the buttons.  He's been occupied for about 30 minutes.

10:00 AM: The boys decide they want to glue.  I get them set up with collage materials, cardboard trays, scissors, papers, and their choice of glue -- Elmer's in a bottle or Mod Podge in a bowl with a brush.  Chipmunk is soon covered in glue, but does manage to also put some on his tray.  There is some frustration on the twins' part: Pip is gluing natural feathers to a piece of cardstock and unfortunately, most of them are small down feathers which are hard to glue without getting all gummed up and coming apart.  And Pop's scissors are not cooperating with him.  This is pretty typical.  My role is to dart from one kid to another providing help, encouragement, and exhortations for patience.  Andy tells me that there is a special room in heaven reserved for homeschooling mothers. 

Pip sets up his collage as part of our nature area.

10: 45 AM: By this time Katydid and Gareth are involved in their own activities.  We're experimenting with different ways to plan for them... or actually, to help them plan their own work. I asked on the 4real boards about planning with Literature for a Young Lady and Jen helpfully replied with how she helps her eldest plan her own work.  I presented that as an option for the kids, and they decided they would like to give it a shot.  So I wrote out a chart (no printer, remember) with days and times on it, and on Sunday we sat down to figure out what they wanted to do during the week, and also what was required for them to do (like math, Latin, and language). 

I clipped off a bit of the top, but you get the picture. 

When I emerge from helping the boys with their collages (and washing all the glue off Chipmunk), I find Gareth working on his math and Katydid comfortably esconced on the couch with Little Women.  Andy takes a break from working on the computer to get the little boys dressed and play with the transportation counters on the floor -- more sorting. Farmerboy can no longer avoid his chores and must get dressed and pick up the family room.  Because people need me -- often -- it takes a good 45 minutes to clean up the dining room. 

11:15 AM: Gareth is now working on his religion and informs Farmerboy that he's going to be done soon so Farmerboy had better get to work if he wants to go out to the archery range.  Katydid didn't know that Gareth was going to do archery, so she scraps the plans she made yesterday to go out and shoot, too.  She's been reading for about an hour with only a brief break, so it's just about time for her to do something active.

11:30 AM: The dining room is not completely clean, but the little boys are clamoring to be let out of the small fenced yard by the deck, and it would be nice to talk to Andy a while before he goes.  Andy takes the little boys out with him to feed greens to the turkeys, and the three older kids head out to practice some archery.  I pick up the transportation counters for the nth time this morning and follow.

 

(Andy took these pictures.  Gareth told me later he got a bullseye!)

While the big kids shoot, the little boys play "dinosaur hunter" in the sideyard with me.  They're gathering sticks and pretending they're dinosaur bones.

12:15 PM: Everyone is hungry by now, so we head in for lunch.  Someone lets Chipmunk in the bathroom first to wash his hands and is not supervising and Chipmunk dunks his truck in the toilet.  I clean him up (and the truck) and then make cheese quesadillas for the kids.  Andy and I eat leftover steak from the night before (I found a stash in the back of the freezer) and canteloupe. At lunch Andy mentions a book that has been recommended to him called The Ten Commandments of How to Fail at Business.  We have a discussion about that, and also about how a Christian should view or use wealth.  Then Andy loads his luggage and the vegetables for the nuns into his van and heads off to the airport.  The big kids are in charge of cleaning up after lunch.  The little boys and I go outside to play some more dinosaur hunter.

2:00 PM: I'm taking the little boys in for some read alouds and a nap.  Katydid comes in to get the camera, because she says the older three want to "study turkey behavior".  It turns out they just want to make the toms strut.

(Pictures by Katydid)

While I admit that the Naragansett tom is particularly impressive when he struts, banging things and making a lot of noise to get him agitated is probably not a good idea.  So no more "studying turkey behavior".

While the big kids are outside, I read Dinosaurs Big and Small (A Let's Read and Find Out title) , Little Tom Turkey (a book about wild turkeys told from the point of view of a small male poult; the writing is not so great, but it's tough to find picture books about wild/heritage turkeys), and a tractor book to the three little boys.  Then it's to bed for them.

2:45-3:00 ish: I've gotten the boys to sleep. When I come into the kitchen, I notice that the cleaning job done after lunch was not all that great.  But now it's time to do some concentrated book work with the older 3 kids.  Since the twins and Chipmunk require most (if not all) of my attention in the morning, the bigger kids have to save anything that needs my attention until the afternoon.  This is not my preferred way of doing things -- nor, to be honest, always the preferred way for my kids either.  But it's what we have to do.  It turns out that they have come in at 2:30 just like they were supposed to and gotten to work.  We've had this basic template schedule for a long time now, but this is only the start of our second week after being "off" for summer.  So I'm pleased that they're readjusting to our school schedule so quickly.  Katydid is working on the first lesson of Lingua Mater 6, and Gareth has finished his lesson for the day in Lingua Mater 7 and is on the couch reading Fellowship of the Ring.  Farmerboy has already done his handwriting (Handwriting Without Tears, My Printing Book) so I take him into the dining room to work on some phonics.  First I need to see what letter sounds he remembers from earlier in the summer, so we do a short "quiz".  Turns out he's forgotten about half his letter sounds.  He wants me to write some words for him to read, though, so I compose a variety of silly sentences using mainly -at words. (Sample: "I sat on the cat.")  He enjoys this and runs to show Katydid and Gareth how silly the sentences are after we're done.

3:30 PM: Katydid is done with her language, so we move on to Latin.  We're redoing the lesson we ended with in June, Review Lesson III from Latina Christiana I.  For some reason we only got through half the book last year.  I'm hoping to do better this year.  Farmerboy wants to get a board game out of the closet and "pretend to play it himself". Ok... he actually chooses the Rush Hour puzzle, which I mentally chalk up to math for the day.  I'm still trying to figure out math for him. I bought Making Math Meaningful Level I for him in the spring, but it turns out I don't really like it at that level. 

4:00 PM: When we're done with our chants and reviewing the vocabulary, Katydid switches to math, which she is able to do independently for the day.  (She is using Making Math Meaningful Level 4, which I do like at least for Katydid, as it seems to be sticking... no small feat for her.  Sometimes it requires me to make presentations, but I think she's finally gotten the concept of multiplying two digits by two digits... albeit in the non-traditional way taught by this curriculum.)  Gareth has written on his chart that he is going to work on a book "response" to Out of the Silent Planet, which he read last week.  He can either work on a graphic novel/comic book version of the book or he can write a book report.  I expect him to choose the comic book, but he surprises me by choosing the book report.  We spend a little over a half an hour discussing the book, how to write a book report, and then planning it out. 

4:45 PM: The kids are done with their work for the day, and Chipmunk is up, but not up, and is dozing on my shoulder.  I check email and the kids have their computer time.  Katydid heads back to her room when it is not her turn to practice her violin and say a rosary.

5:15 PM: Chipmunk is now up and playing with the Rush Hour cars that Farmerboy neglected to put away.  The twins are up and clamoring for their computer time, too. I go to start dinner and realize that I can not make a Dutch Baby because I do not have enough eggs.  What?  Right -- we gave away a dozen eggs on Friday and I made scrambled eggs and ratatouille one night for dinner.  Now we have to wait for the hens to build the supply again.  I remember that I have some frozen spaghetti sauce downstairs in the freezer, though, so I can still make dinner!

I also have to work on the mess left over from lunch.

Chipmunk keeps me company with the pots and pans.

6:00 PM: It took forever to defrost the spaghetti sauce. Dinner is going to be late.  The little boys are clamoring to be let out of the gate (again), so I take my record book and head outside with them while I wait on dinner.

7:00 PM: Dinner's finally ready.  I cave and let the kids eat in front of the TV.  I'd like to say they watched something educational, but no, it was SpongeBob.  And I eat in front of the computer, starting this post. Then Andy calls to let me know he's in Chicago and will be departing for Iowa shortly and also that the Little Sisters would like pictures of us planting the garden for their newsletter.  I am embarassed to say that I have no pictures.  We'll have to take some pictures of harvest instead.

7:30ish: Time for after dinner chores.  Usually I clean the kitchen, Katydid picks up the dining room and kitchen and sweeps both rooms, Farmerboy picks up the family room and vacuums the rug, and Gareth has the living room/entryway area, picking up and sweeping.  This makes it sound as if everything ought to be clean, but this doesn't account for stacks of books and other things on tables and counters, or the disorganization of the toy shelves.  Plus tonight the kids will have to knock off early to do all the chicken/turkey chores that Andy usually does (with Chipmunk and the little boys tagging along).

8:00 PM: The kids are out putting the chickens in for the night and I am trying to hurriedly wash the last pans and sweep the dining room and kitchen floors and switch the laundry before the little boys rev up too much.  (My kids never look tired because they just wind up more and more as they get tired.)

8:30 PM: I didn't make it.  There are still pans in the sink but it's time to get the little boys in their pajamas.  When the big kids come in from doing their outside chores, I ask Katydid to read to the little boys while I put on my pajamas.  Pop has been fascinated by the weather lately, so we also check the weather on the Weather Channel.  Then Katydid reads Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie! while I change for the night. 

9:00 PM: The boys still want books.  Katydid reads a couple of tractor books to Chipmunk, Little Tom Turkey (again), and Where Do Chicks Come From?  I take this opportunity to rotate the books in the book display, which sorely needs it.

9:30 PM: Time for bed.  Gareth and Katydid head back to their rooms and bathroom to take showers and read until who knows when.  The little boys want to know if I will read Farmer Boy while they're in bed like Daddy does.  I tell them that since it's Daddy's favorite book, we'll save it for him.  But I will read the next story from Egermeir's Story Bible.  Chipmunk is not having it, though.  I tell the boys I can't read because I need to nurse Chipmunk.  Pip starts complaining.  I attempt to balance the heavy book precariously past Chipmunk while I nurse him and read the story of "The Great Flood."  It begins with Enoch being taken up to God.  Pop wants to know how people get to heaven, and once you're there, how you can get back home.  Farmerboy tells him you can't get back home.  Pop starts to cry.  Farmerboy tells him that heaven is a wonderful place where you'll know everything, including what happened to the dinosaurs.  Pop says he wants our home to be his home forever.  Farmerboy says, well, his soul will go to heaven after he dies.  Pip says he doesn't want to go to heaven if souls are there.  Farmerboy says everybody has a soul.  Pip is furious because he thought souls were bad things! I'm sure he's confusing them with ghosts.  I would just really like to go to sleep.  But no.  As soon as I get them calmed down, Chipmunk starts fussing because this isn't our usual routine.  I try to take him into my bedroom, and Pip starts crying because he wants Daddy.  I sit back down in the rocking chair, and Pip stops crying but Chipmunk starts.  Finally, I have to take Chipmunk into my room and just let Pip cry for a while.  It's keeping Pop and Farmerboy awake, but I have to get one of the two fussing kids to sleep. 

10:30 PM: Chipmunk is finally asleep and I go back in to sit with Pip.  I bring my book and read a little in the hall light.

11:00 PM: Pip is finally asleep.  I add the last few things to the dishwasher and turn it on.  Then I head back to my bed, where Chipmunk is sleeping for the moment.  I try to write down a few notes, but apparently the scratching of the pen wakes Chipmunk up again.

11:30 PM: Everything is finally quiet.  Andy won't be home till Thursday, and I'm not sure I can survive that long. (But obviously, I do! :-)

 

Our summer in pictures

Today will be our first day of school (i.e., doing math again).  The kids are ready to start again, I think, although I'm not.  I'm still trying to reorganize books, art supplies, and Montessori materials.  This past week and next week are also supposed to be the warmest of the summer -- highs in the mid-80s, which does get a bit warm when there's no air conditioning.  Anyway, the point is: by now I've learned that nothing will ever be perfect and it's better to be flexible and just start when you can. This is actually  the very first time ever that we've ever started a new school year on the day I planned to start it. As it is, we'll be easing into morning work... and continuing with the daily afternoon hours of playing in the hose.  These warm days won't last long.

I imagine Grandma will want to see some pictures before the maples change entirely.

  

Nature walks around the yard, observing the changes in our "mini pond" beneath the stone where the water gathers and duckweed grows and frogs hide...

Playing "army"...

A little chaos on the soccer sidelines...

Farmerboy played a lot of goal.

Katydid and Farmerboy both caught crayfish from the creek behind the soccer field and brought them home to observe.  Both crayfish molted and were safely returned to the creek at the end of the season, in spite of some accidental habitat spillage in the van on the way there.

Katydid named her crayfish "Bobby". 

Katydid's bantams have been interesting to watch, as they're more like little birds than chickens...

Farmers sometimes work inside, too, "buttering corn for horses".

We strung a tent on the deck.

Gareth and Andy learned how to prepare and cook fish the kids caught. (Gareth earned his Fishing badge.)

We visited Ft. William Henry in Lake George (more on that trip later - I hope!)

The kids built "huts".  (This one is Farmerboy's. I hope to do a longer post about the huts before the weather turns cold.)

Lots of running around with sticks... er, swords... er, guns... um, lasers? (I like this photo because Katydid caught Pop running right out of his boot.  Oh, and the white thing in the grass is a small chicken.)

Boys.

Katydid raised a Mourning Cloak butterfly from a caterpillar and let it go.  This was our first successful attempt at raising a butterfly. (Actually, the little boys raised lots of moths from Eastern Tent Caterpillars this year, too.  Our caterpillars usually don't do anything after we catch them -- except die (cough) -- so this was an interesting year.  I wonder what was different?)

And, of course, we spent a lot of time with the turkeys. A lot of time.

Country Diary: July Garden

I was going to name this post "Tomato Madness," but then I thought, well, there are other things going on in the garden, too.  So instead I went with the boring "July Garden".

Weather: 75 ish and the sun has come out again after a few brief rain showers.  I believe it has rained almost every single day this month -- at least a few sprinkles.  We have spent more than a few soccer games huddling in sweatshirts.  I made Italian sausage and onions Friday night.  It was raining again, as usual -- a steady cold rain -- and as Andy sat down he said, "Boy, this is a good dinner to warm you up..."  And I finished for him, "... on a cold July night."

In Bloom:

Black-eyed Susans at the edge of the comfrey bed...

Katydid's miniature wildflower meadow...

A closer-up view of Katydid's flowers...

The roses, which are a bit past their prime.  The old growth is already spent, and now only the new growth is blooming.  I'm not deadheading the flowers because I want to try to collect rosehips in the fall. 

The milkweed smells wonderful and has been buzzing with bees all week.  I haven't seen any monarch caterpillars, but...

Katydid found this Mourning Cloak caterpillar on the driveway and brought it inside to see if she could watch it form a chrysalis and turn into a butterfly.  We see a lot of Tiger Swallowtails around here, but we've never seen a Mourning Cloak, so it should be interesting.  The caterpillars feed on birch and wild roses, so it's strange we've never seen one before (as we have both in abundance).  Katydid has been taking pictures every day to chronicle the caterpillar's progress.  She reports that it has formed a complete chrysalis already.

Another insect related to blooms...

The milkweed beetle.

In the Barnyard:

Turkeys.

Actually, they're in the orchard with the elderberries.  The elderberries were teeming with Japanese beetles, and the turkeys love to eat Japanese beetles, so it seemed like a good match.  We have them enclosed with electric poultry netting, which does absolutely nothing to stop them from getting out.  Heritage turkeys are exceptional flyers.  And they don't seem to care about getting shocked by the netting either, which I find strange.  Their favorite place to go after they get out of the netting is the chicken coop, where they eat the chickens' food, then fly up to the roof to roost.  They have good personalities, though.  They're very inquisitive and people-friendly.  The Bourbon Reds and Blue Slates are not very smart.  The Naragansetts (the ones that look like wild turkeys) seem to be far hardier and more intelligent as well. Oddly, of the 8 turkeys that survived out of our original 15, only one is a tom.  He's the big Naragansett with the red neck.  I like the turkeys far better than the meat chickens, who will not only peck but bite you when you try to change their food and water.  (We ordered a straight run of White Rock and Delewares for meat birds, so I'm talking about the young cockerels here... Katydid has actually already decided which one she wants to eat first, which is something.)

In the Garden:

This is why I wanted to call this post "Tomato Madness":

We thought these tomato plants were going to die.  The night after we planted them, we had a light frost here and there.  Some of their leaves curled up and turned yellow and black.  Andy went out and bought more tomatoes to replace most of these, which looked pretty bad. Now they have formed their own tomato jungle.  These are not the only tomato plants I have.  In fact, this is just half of one bed.  I have another bed this size full of more jungley tomato plants.

I am really scratching my head about this.  Usually in a cold, rainy year, the tomatoes do not do well.  The plants don't blossom, the blossoms don't set, and the tomatoes take forever to ripen.  Or, they are ruined by slugs.

Can you see all the tomatoes in there?  They're pulling the branches so close to the ground the branches are developing roots.  (All those little hairs on a tomato plant have the potential to turn into roots, which is why when you plant tomatoes, you're supposed to stick them in the ground right up to the bottom of the first set of true leaves.)  It's been raining so much (or we've been at soccer so much) that we haven't had time to attend to the garden.  So now we have super-sprawly tomatoes and weeds run wild among the eggplants and cabbages.  Anyway, these are Early Girls (I think), a hybrid variety, but even my heirlooms (Brandywine, Striped German... and oh, I can't remember the others) are doing well for the most part.  I had to toss a big half-ripe Striped German to the chickens this morning because of slug-damage and rot (which made me gnash my teeth a bit) but most of the tomatoes don't look that bad, even though they're growing so close to the ground.

I did pick this one before it could get any worse, though:

First tomato.  Not pretty, but my expectations have been low in the garden this year.  Deer ate every.single.pea plant. Rabbits ate all (all) my lettuce and spinach.  Something is decimating the brussel sprouts. The squash and cucumber seeds rotted in the ground it was so cold and wet in June.  And crows stole all our corn twice.

See the corn plants here and there? (If you squint?)  We planted that whole space to corn.  The only corn that actually managed to escape the crows are two rows on the right, which happened to be under netting.

I'm not feeling very charitable toward the crows lately.  They run the hawks off, but I don't think that makes up for stealing the corn.

A few more garden pictures (because I like to look back from year to year to compare):

This is the first year we've grown cabbages, and they're doing well in this wet, cool weather.

My few remaining squash plants are starting to bear.

The peppers are not doing too badly.

The onions are getting rather large.  They like the steady supply of water.

The blackberry bush is still my favorite.  It's loaded with fruit and will need to be wrapped with bird netting before too long.

Harvest this week:

2 yellow squash, one sweet pepper, a handful of purple and yellow beans (not pictured),  1 zucchini, 1 cippolini onion that Chipmunk stepped on and knocked out of the ground, 5 giant Walla Walla onions (not pictured), 10 Yukon Gold potatoes, 5 stalks of rhubarb, roughly a half-pint of raspberries, eaten off the bushes, 1 cherry tomato, and 1 nearly ripe Early Girl tomato.

I made a strawberry-rhubarb crumble that everyone pronounced one of the top 10 best desserts ever... and a 3 bean salad (with squash and zucchini added) that I am going to have to eat all of myself. (Ahem.)

And now I had better go tie up some more out-of-control tomato plants. Before it starts raining again.

Emergency preparedness: working on the pantry

Last week, when I wasn't thinking or writing or reading about educational philosophy, I did a fair amount of reading and thinking about groceries.  Actually, since I plan on making emergency preparedness a focus of our year, this does actually relate to homeschooling. :-)  Periodically it hits me that we live in area where winter storms might knock out the power for long periods of time (as happened to many people we knew during last winter's ice storm).  It also hits me that I have a bunch of little kids.  How would we be able to get them out in a fire? (This thought kept me up nights when the twins were infants and Farmerboy was only 2.)  What if something happened to me?  Would my kids know what to do?

So we're going to work on this throughout the year.  (I'm putting it in the curriculum I submit to the school district as health.)  Gareth and Katydid are both working on the Boy Scout First Aid merit badge right now (Gareth will be able to actually earn the badge; Katydid is doing the same work for the Pilgrims of the Holy Family badge) and I am working on rebuilding our pantry.

When we decided to eat mostly local, the number of meals using canned goods we bought from the store went way down and we had very little canned food in our pantry.  The freezer was full of meat, vegetables, and fruit, but the pantry was not.  It's far easier for me to freeze our produce than to can it. There's a problem with having most of your food frozen, though.  What if the power goes out to the freezer?   And sometimes (like last week) we ran into tough weeks where there wasn't a whole lot that was easy to make (or that didn't require defrosting, as in a five pound chicken or a four pound roast), and of course we fell back on what American families often seem to fall back on. McDonald's. 

As it happened, we also loaded Quicken this week and were able to see just how much falling back on McDonald's in a bad month (or two) was costing us. Yikes! And then there was this conversation at 4real on the cost of meals per serving, which has given me a new hobby. ;-) The challenge is, of course, in using high quality local in-season ingredients in an economical way. In thirty minutes or less, since Chipmunk still refuses to sleep anywhere but on me.

Anyway, this week I bought extra emergency rations to start rebuilding our stock of just-in-case canned goods -- primarily so we'd have something to eat if we all got sick or if I got sick or if we'd been running hither and yon all day.  After this, the plan is to keep stocking up a little at a time, taking advantage of sales, etc.

(You know, some people think about how the world will be beautified or inspired by what they blog, but I must confess that I just think things like, "Hey! My cupboard's full of food again! I think I'll take some pictures! LOL)

So here are my "the cupboard's full of food again" pictures, which I hope you'll tolerate... I am working on a couple of homeschooling posts, so if you come here primarily for those, just click away and come back later :-).

This is the cupboard I use for canned goods.  You can see that it's not very big.  Our house was built in the 1950's by a doctor with five children -- girls.  Apparently large families in the 1950's only stored food in their bomb shelters.  Actually, I'm not really joking; the doctor did put a bomb shelter in the basement of this house, along with his practice, and this bomb shelter (totally wasted on a house outside tornado country) is lined with wonderful can-size shelves.  In contrast, the kitchen has a skinny little pantry with an almost uselessly deep cupboard on top.  I don't like storing too much in the basement, because a)I forget about it down there and b) it's damp, and I don't want the cans to rust. I'm sure it was all much nicer when it was first built.

Anyway, I restocked some of our "emergency" food, which in our case means soup, canned fruit, and creamed corn. (And spaghetti sauce, since I usually make and freeze my own.  But I used up the two emergency jars right before I took this picture.)  Everything else I use in regular cooking: canned beans, various tomato products, canned salmon, coconut oil, molasses, and (you can't see it) enchilada and barbecue sauce.  I'll continue restocking a little more every week, since this is obviously not enough to keep a family of 8 going for any length of time. I cleared off a shelf in another cabinet so I can expand.

I would also like to can tomatoes this year... if it ever gets warm enough or dries out enough for them to ripen... and if the groundhogs don't get them first.  My garden this year has been one catastrophe after another.  But that's another story.

This is the cabinet next to the canned goods, which I use for pasta and rice (and dried beans).  We had gotten low on spaghetti, which is also an emergency around here.  The blue bags are tortellini --  convenience food, but a lunch staple. Definitely something to rely on when I can't cook, too.

 

The actual "pantry".  I had it organized not too long ago, but it doesn't take long for it to degenerate.  Top shelf is really supposed to be staples like various vinegars and sugar (I keep my flour in the freezer because of bugs), but you can see that a couple of bags of chips-on-sale have crept in, and that the sugar has moved accordingly to the third shelf.  What you can't see in this picture is the 5lb jar of buckwheat honey that's out on the kitchen counter, or the jars of strawberry jam tucked in behind... something... on the 2nd or 3rd shelves.  The Gatorade is also gone by now, even though it was supposed to be for sick emergencies, not for kids to come out drinking after playing soccer in the yard.  We really try hard to avoid all food dyes, BHT, and TBHQ because they affect the behavior of some of our kids.  I don't think Gatorade is on anybody's diet.  There's more juice in the basement, because Wal-Mart was running a sale.

The freezer forms the bulk of our food storage, but I was more excited about actually having food in our cupboards.  We're in that time of year when the garden hasn't really gotten going yet and the supply of meat is dwindling, too.  I think we're pretty much done with the lamb we bought last year, and we've eaten a good chunk out of the side of beef we bought in October.  We have a few chickens left -- in the freezer, I mean.  The bulk of our chicken supply is pecking each other in the brooder right now.  It's the time for inventory: we need more lamb, I can't buy enough pork, we didn't eat very much of the broccoli I froze, I stumbled upon two more bags of squash, we're out of corn, and we're still eating last year's green beans.

I am beginning to refill the freezer in a small way, though:

 

14 quarts in the freezer.  And like I said, I made jam.

 

It turned out pretty well, if the rate at which it's being eaten is any indication.

So... anyone else want to share a peek in the pantry?  If you do, leave me a link in the comments!

Fruit Trees and berry bushes

Gae asked recently about our fruit trees.  I tried to leave a comment but I'm having trouble commenting on my own blog. Gae, I'm working on your Reggio questions in a different post, but since I was out working in the garden today, I thought I would take some pictures and answer your question at the same time.  (The sun was out so I needed to take advantage of it!)

Gae wanted to know if our fruit trees provided enough fruit for our family.  Unfortunately... no.  This is only their fourth season, so the only tree bearing fruit right now is one of our peaches.

 

They're very small right now and will ripen next month. Last year was the first year this tree bore, and I am very happy to see it bearing again. Our other peach bore a few peaches last year, but this year there isn't a single one on it.

It's also become apparent by now that our cherry trees have died (possibly because they've been repeatedly stripped by deer every winter).  Our apple trees are bigger, but it takes 5-7 years for an apple to bear.  So no apples yet.

 

One of our young apples.

Our trees are all semi-dwarf or dwarf varieties.  Some of them are smaller than others.

 

If you look closely you can see that this volunteer squash plant (growing out of a compost top dressing) almost completely dwarfs this dwarf tree.  I think the tree is a pear. It's not supposed to be this small.  I think it's been hit by a few too many late cold snaps and a few too many hungry deer.

On a totally unrelated note, I am going to stop planting winter squash.  The best plants always grow out of the compost.  The others get eaten by cucumber beetles.

Anyway, Gae, if you're looking for a new place, one with mature fruit trees already bearing would be a HUGE plus in my opinion.  I wish the doctor who built this house fifty years ago had planted apples instead of crabapples.  If we ever end up moving away from here, mature fruit trees will be high on my list of what to look for in a new place.  Mature fruit trees and barns.  The house would be optional. ;-)

Berry bushes are a different matter, though.  They bear in a year or two.  We've had the best luck with blackberries.

 

This is one bush, which is also in its fourth season. It is loaded with flowers and berries this year.  It's also propagated at least one more bush which is bearing this year, too.  When we planted it, it was tiny.  Last year, blackberries were selling for $4.95 a half pint.  We paid 4.95 for the bush, and it gave us -- oh, I can't remember how many quarts of berries.  We ate most of them within 30 minutes of picking them.

We also have blueberries, which are doing better this year -- their second season.

 

We fertilize them with pine shavings from the chick brooders because they like an acid soil.  I don't know that we have enough bushes to really be self-sufficient with them... or maybe self-sufficiency is just several years down the road. They're very small bushes right now.

Andy also planted some less common berries this year which are doing much better than say, our grapes and raspberries...

  

These are jostaberry bushes.  Jostaberries are supposed to be high in vitamin C.

 

And these are elderberries.  They have blooms already, so I think we're going to get berries in the first year.  You can make wine out of elderberries, but I believe we'll stick to jam. ;-)

Well, that was probably more than you wanted to know... but I was so excited to see the sun today I couldn't help myself.  Of course it's getting to rain... again... but that brief glimpse of summer was nice.

 :-)

ETA: I totally forgot about the highbush cranberry in the front yard, and after I took these pictures, Andy cut the grass and discovered a seaberry we thought had died.  The seaberry was actually in pretty good shape, so we were pleased.  And we also noticed that the blackberry bush has another new bush on its other side. 

I also have to apologize for the template flipping.  I liked the honeybees, but I couldn't take the small photo size.