From a Friend's Farm

When we have our own hobby farm/house on five acres one day, I want it, too, to have a creek within walking distance:

I might not want dwarf goats, but I'm not going to rule it out, either:

This is why:

Cute baby goats (+1). Milking their mamas twice a day (-1). Drinking fresh, free milk (+1). Keeping goats fed and watered and housed and clean (-many more than 1). Free lawn care and weed control (+1). Wethering the boy goat using that rubber band speculum thingy that my friend showed me (-1).

I've got some time to think of more plusses before we finally get our hobby farm one day, fortunately.

Blueberries

We also came home with ticks and tadpoles, you will not be surprised to hear.

 

The girls do not share my strategy of, you know, actually picking all the ripe berries off of one bush before moving on.

I think they picked about four blueberries from every single bush on the property. 3.5 of these blueberries were eaten immediately.

Blueberries only consistently made it into the bucket after their tummies were full.

The third child is such a dear friend of my kiddos. We had the pleasure of watching her taste her first blueberry!

With three big girls to help, I ended up with over thirty pounds (and seventy dollars, yikes!) of summer.

This girl will be nine tomorrow. I'm simultaneously overjoyed and heartbroken.

To Cincinnati, Ohio

It wasn't *exactly* on the way, but a detour through Cincinnati to visit the zoo did nicely break up our long drive to Hershey, Pennsylvania, as well as let us mark another adventure off of our Momma+Kids to-do list:

I used to have a real problem with zoos, and seeing animals in these artificial habitats still often makes me feel very uncomfortable, but after I had kiddos, I just couldn't continue to boycott them. I could have pulled it off with just Syd, perhaps, but Willow deeply loves animals, and deeply loves to observe them, and takes such joy from a zoo visit that I pretty much put my kid's happiness over my statement about animal welfare. I'd still never take her to one of those private wild animal park places, but for now I take the girls to lots of zoos and I don't bitch about it. Perhaps I'm raising animal rights advocates or conservation workers or the two people who will finally figure out how to save polar bears from extinction or stop rhino poaching--who knows?

I do, now, take special note of a zoo's efforts towards habitat construction, conservation of native animal habitats, and their adoption of orphaned or injured animals, but I also enjoy seeing animals that I've never seen in person before, such as these gorillas:

Dirt, huh? ...right.

And a great horned owl!

The Cincinnati Zoo has a great nocturnal animals section, in which they've gradually switched over the lighting system so that it's dark inside during the day, and the animals are awake and busy with their nocturnal animal business.

The petting zoo cracked me up, however, just because they have a whole section for Nigerian Dwarf goats and another habitat for red jungle fowl. A good friend of mine has a little hobby farm outside town, one that the girls and I occasionally visit (she's the generous benefactor of our chickens, for those of you following along at home). And know what she has on her little hobby farm?

Nigerian Dwarf Goats. Red jungle fowl.

The girls LOVED brushing the goats with these hairbrushes (must tell my friend about that...)--

--but when they asked for quarters to put in the goat kibble vending machine so that they could hand-feed the goats, I was all, "If you want to pay to feed goats, I'll drive you over to Mrs. Betsy's house when we get home. You can give her a quarter and she'll let you hand-feed HER goats."

We went back to the gorilla habitat later, when the grown-ups were off public view and instead we could see the new baby! She was abandoned by an inexperienced mother in another zoo, and was being fostered by a team of humans here:

As I write this, however, the baby is now off-exhibit, getting acquainted with a real gorilla foster mom.

One thing that I noticed at the Cincinnati Zoo is that almost all of the day camp kids on field trips there were HORRIBLE! Most groups of kids looked like older preschool, elementary, or young middle school-aged, and they were mostly escorted by, not the college kid staffers that I'm used to seeing at the camps around here, but middle-aged female staffers. The staffers by turns ignored the kids or yelled at them, shouting at them to hurry up or keep going--kind of defeats the point of being at a zoo, you know, if you're not allowed to stop and watch the animals. And the kids, over-stimulated and constantly frustrated and who knows what else, were AWFUL. They pushed and hit each other, screamed and banged on habitat walls, milled around on narrow walking paths and generally made nuisances of themselves.

While we were watching the baby gorilla, and the viewing was pretty crowded, one group of older preschool-aged campers came barreling up with their adults, who immediately took positions off in the background to stand and stare off into the distance while their charges raced up to the viewing fence. The first kids there claimed their spots, and all the other kids behind them screamed at them, pulled on them, tried to shove them aside, and tried to shove my kids aside, while the fence kids aggressively defended their territory. Nobody was watching the baby gorilla.

After a minute, one kid, apparently deciding she needed to go off-road to score a choice spot, climbed OVER the viewing fence and began to work her way past the other kids in the narrow space between the fence and the shrubs that hide the big concrete moat. Having seen all the YouTube videos of kids falling into zoo habitats, I was horrified. I looked over for the staffers, but they were off staring into space, not paying attention, and the ambient noise was too loud to call for them. I looked straight into the kid's eyes and said, "You need to come back to this side of the fence right now," but she totally blew off my random grown-up authority. I briefly imagined just hauling her back over the fence myself, but I didn't want to put my hands on her, so instead I just sort of hovered, helicopter parent-like, ready to snatch her back if she tried to step through the shrubbery and into the abyss. Thankfully, the staffers soon decided that the children, who still hadn't managed to settle down and actually look at the baby gorilla, had seen enough and started screaming at them to get over there and get going, etc.

If nothing else, the experience was quite educational for my sheltered little girls. They watched everything about all these day camp kids with big eyes, and for the longest time couldn't stop talking about how badly some kids behave and how some kids don't listen and how it's dangerous to break rules sometimes and why weren't those camp kids getting to have any fun? Why did those camp kids act so bad? Why were those camp kids hitting each other? Why didn't the grown-up stop that camp kid from pushing me? Why didn't those grown-ups let those kids watch the tigers?

Eye-opening stuff for two pampered little kids. Our family rule is that everybody gets to look at everything for as long as they like. That's why I bring my ipod, so that I can listen to RadioLab while my girls play "spot the salamander" for twenty minutes running--

--or squat and just stroke the turtle, stroke the turtle, stroke the turtle:

I did put my hands on a strange kid in this habitat. Just as the zookeeper was saying, "And if you're wearing brightly colored shoes or have painted toenails, watch out, because the turtles might nip at you," and as I was looking down to see if a turtle might take a bite of my girls' candy-colored Keens, I saw one of the turtles snap at a kid's bright pink flip-flop strap. She was right in front of me, so without thinking I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back so the turtle couldn't get her toes. The goofy kid looked up into my face and laughed, and I said to her, "You just had an adventure!" She ran off to her mom, yelling to her, "I had an adventure! A turtle bit my shoe!"

We perhaps spent the most time in the zoo on the sidewalk in front of the cafe, where this peacock, who apparently has the run of the place, was hanging out and showing off:

People would walk by, stop and look, take a photo, and walk off again, but we camped there, first with both girls curious about the peacock, then with me and Syd sitting at an umbrella-covered table and watching Willow follow the peacock around and around and around, totally lost in it:

We spent similar ages in the bird habitat. I told the girls before we went in that I wasn't going to buy them any nectar (we have this at our zoo, so we've done it before), but as soon as we came through the door people were practically lining up to offer us the rest of their nectar cups that they were done with. When those nectar cups were drunk, the girls would walk around empty-handed for about two seconds before being offered another one that someone was finished with. It was excellent:

The kids have way more zoo stamina than me. I don't know what this exhibit below is, just that Sydney was mesmerized by it while I sat on a bench and rested my feet:

I practically dragged the kids over to the manatee habitat, though. I really wanted to see the manatees the last couple of times that we were in Florida, but didn't want to devote the time to trek down to the Everglades when we already had plenty to see and do.

And leaf cutter ants! I'd never seen these before, much less the elaborate habitat that was set up for them, with their tree at one end of the insect building, their nest at the other end, and a system of clear tubes connecting the two along all the visitor walkways:

As would become habit on this trip, we closed that zoo down, not leaving until we were practically kicked out, and even then dragging our toes and stopping for photos:

I drove two exhausted little girls to Columbus, Ohio, then, where we stayed the night, swam, ate sandwiches, and perhaps lost my planner (I haven't quite given up hope of recovering it, nor have I stopped fretting about it every single second of my life since).

Next stop: Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Homeschool Field Trip: Conner Prairie

Conner Prairie is an interactive living history museum in Indiana, near Indianapolis. William Conner lived there in the early 1800s, getting stinking rich off of fur trading with the Lenape Indians who lived near there for a time. Conner Prairie includes his house and homestead, a recreated Lenape Indian village, a recreated pioneer-era prairie village, a recreated Indiana village in the process of being raided by Confederate soldiers, and the recreation of an 1859 lighter than air balloon flight, and last week we all went to see it with one of our local homeschool groups.

The barn at the Conner homestead, with sheep and their lambs, goats and their kids, miniature horses and their foals, a few cats, and a calf or two just walking around and waiting to be petted

chopping wood at the prairie village--as a souvenir, the younger kid tried to haul away a chunk of wood as big as her head

playing games

doing chores

lots of stuff to look at

the older kid's two favorite exhibits were the general store, where she spent ages playing with a scale, some weights, and some nails, and the telegraph station, where she spent ages with a telegraph machine and a computer program on Morse code

experimenting with models of helium balloons

and, why yes indeed, riding in a giant helium balloon ourselves

As you can see, it was VERY exciting while the balloon lifted off. Once we were fully aloft, everybody got a good chance to look all around and the ride was quite peaceful:

with, of course, a lovely view

Interesting fact: the original 1859 balloon flight after which this attraction is modeled was not done using helium, nor hot air, but a lighter-than-air gas made from coal byproducts. I also learned that the Conner family sent away to South America for the spices that they used to dye their wool, and that the schoolchildren in that area used soapstone instead of chalk on their tablets, since soapstone was readily available and chalk was not, and when we happened upon a woman who had just finished making a salve good for cuts and burns, I called the older kid over and forced her to let the woman rub it on the knee she had just skinned, and the older kid didn't complain about that knee again for the rest of the day, either because it didn't hurt anymore after the salve or because she was afraid that if she did complain, I'd let another stranger rub weird-smelling crap on it.

the Lenape Indians were happy to let the younger kid use their mortar and pestle

and to let the whole family set off in their dugout canoe

back at the edge of the Conner homestead, the girls were rendered simply giddy at the sight of all that space!

Gift shop purchases=two new quill pen sets (I was supposed to ask my uncle to set aside some feathers for me during pheasant hunting season, but I forgot), one McGuffey's spelling book to add to the McGuffey's Eclectic Readers that my grandmother bought for me as a child, three sticks of candy (Matt ALWAYS buys candy in gift shops!), and one set of Melissa and Doug fuzzy horses.

I handled this field trip differently from most previous ones--instead of having the kids do a lot of prep work beforehand to establish context, we just...went! Although I'd still rather have done some reading and writing about the time period first (for some reason, this long-planned field trip snuck up on me!), I was pleased to see that the kids were so absorbed by the material on offer that I think that they'll be able to draw on it during our summer-long pioneer unit, which we'll begin bright and early next week.

This week, it's all about the International Fair, and the kids' project covering the continent of Africa. And then...a little break!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Down on the Farm

So that I could surprise the girls after school today (SCHOOL!!! SCHOOL!!!! SCHOOOOOOL!!!!!), I finished up some little laminated cut-outs that I've been thinking about and figuring out for the last couple of days. The theme?
The farm, of course. We've got a nice big barn, a farmer, a horse and cow, a fat little pig, a duck and a chick and a nest. I drew the templates on template plastic and then cut them out double-sided, with scrapbook paper on one side and this really awesome vintage wood-grain printed paper on the other side (I found the paper at the Goodwill Outlet Store, as part of a book of samples for some Japanese company that printed laminate? Anyway, FULL of paper with faux wood grain and marble and cork and stuff). I did it a really stupid way that made it take forever, however--next time, I will spraymount the papers together, then cut them all as one piece, instead of cutting out each side individually and then fussing them together interminably.

Laminated, they're nice and sturdy, and their simple forms and two-dimensionality is actually really engaging--I've already seen the girls use that in some interesting ways in their play this afternoon, and when Sydney spilled her chocolate soymilk all over the farmer and her barn, I was extra-stoked about the laminating. It's as easy to make two of something as it is to make one, by the way, so I have a second farm play set up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop today.

It seems, yes, that for my girl Willow, the farm, unlike her other passions of outer space, the ocean, earthworms, the Nutcracker, rollerblading, and all the other billion things she loves and forgets about and then loves again later in a slightly different way, farming is no passing, here-and-there fancy.

Willow loves farms like she loves dinosaurs.

I totally get this, by the way. Although Sydney and her dear daddy are generalists, interested in billions of things but not to the exclusion of billions of other things, Willow and I are obsessives. She loves dinosaurs and farms the way I love handicraft, say, or medieval literature, or 1980s pop culture.

The fun thing, though, is the way Will gets us all passionate about her passions. Sydney, at almost two years younger, is always a willing follower (and growing to be sometimes a leader, that big girl), but I wouldn't have told you this time last year, a brown yard languishing out the window, that this time this year I'd have a little garden--A lasagna garden, to be exact, and today I harvested cranberry beans, orange tomatoes, husk cherries, and jalepeno peppers. Tomorrow I plan to cut some kale.

I also couldn't have told you that during our trip to California, in between all the beaches and aquariums and hands-on museums we could handle, I would research and discover a wonderful little farm for us to tour one day. Ardenwood had enough baby goats for Sydney to get over her goat-phobia slightly, and a lovely docent for me to once again obnoxiously out-docent (I can't help myself--she tells me that farm women had to hang all their clothes to dry, and I talk about the benefits of shade-drying versus sun-bleaching. She shows me the one-piece clothespins they used, and I tell her how to make clothespin dolls. She tells me that blue jeans take forever to dry on the line, and did I know that they were invented in California, and I tell her that the adoption of the clothing of poor workmen into mainstream society is a metaphor for Americanization, etc.) It also had some handy tips for my own at-home gardening and someday farm dreaming:Most importantly, however, it had, as have the best tourist farms we've visited, several working fields of crops to examine. Upon seeing them, my future farm girl stooped to examine a few plants up close, then immediately took off down the rows:
Trying to envision just where to put the big barn with the baby chickens and the baby kittens and the stall for every horse, I bet.