Field Trips: Scout camp, CUB scout camp, and Family Days on the Farm

This has been a very full week of fun.  We swam at our friends' pool, gave another family a homeschool lesson on raising rabbits, and had friends over for dinner. Those are the things I did not document with pictures. And Hubby was gone to scout camp all week.

Brother M had his first cub scout day camp experience on Thursday and Friday. He shot a BB gun for the first time, fished, swam, hiked, and had a grand time.

Parents were invited to join the fun Friday evening for skits and dinner.

He skipped the hike and service project on Saturday in favor of coming with the rest of us to "Family Days on the Farm".  It was the best Amish/Mennonite activity that we have done so far. Their were hundreds of people there.

  One half of the parking area was for cars and the other half was for buggies.

 The atmosphere reminded me of a stake activity.  There was a big buffet lunch and a workshop with classes.  All the food was homemade.  I watched little boys hand cranking the potato cutter and giving them to the girls to fry them up as french fries.  They had soups, salads and fruit. Fresh homemade potato chips and popcorn with nutritional yeast seasoning.  Shoefly pie and ice cream.  One of the drink choices was homemade kefir!
They had classes all day on various farm topics. I wanted to go to all of them. Since hubby was still away at scout camp I had to be very strategic about which classes I attended. I figured out that the Gardener's tent was next to the Children's activity tent and was able to sit on the benches toward the back on the side near the children's tent.  The kids played in the children's area during my classes and I was able to take notes.

I was trying to be respectful of the Amish and did not take many pictures (although it was all so picturesque!), but I had to get Miss L on her pony ride.  She was so excited to ride. 

 Even big sister A with all her riding experience wanted to do it so that she could be on a horse again. She has not been doing lessons for the last 2 years.

 

 The kids also had a barrel ride.

  Their were tents for classes and also tents with vendors.  Several of the vendors had herbal remedies, teas, and extracts. I enjoyed talking with them. Almost everything other than the vendor tents was free.  They just had donation boxes posted around.  I was very confused about it at first.  No entry fee. No cashiers outside the buffet tent.  It was all free, just donate what you could to help cover the costs. Wow.

 We saw a horse treadmill for the first time.  The horse walks and it charges up a battery. Or there is also a feed mill attachment (red bucket thing center foreground) and the horsepower can be used to grind up the grain.

I have to write this down so I don't forget.  The tents were circus tent size with huge poles standing in the center and sides.  Well, while I was sitting in the orcharding class, a young amish boy climbed up to the top of one of the huge tent poles to retrieve a balloon. No one said a word to him.  I saw one amish lady nudge another like maybe we should tell him not to do that, and she just said "not my kin".  I later learned that their was a group of boys going around and collecting balloons and making them into a long chain of helium balloons to pull around. Very creative. And it was amazing how many people at this event had no shoes on. Apparently that is not necessary in the summer if you are Amish.