Family Schooling: Biology

We finished off our Notgrass American History books a week ago and moved on to Biology: Kingdoms and Classifications.  I taught this class at our homeschool co-op, but felt that the kids and I needed to go through it again.  It is a wonderful curriculum with a lot of fun activities and information.  Like all science curriculums, it takes some investment to really get a lot out of it. I bought a microscope and a bunch of pre-made slides last year. We have acquired more slides over time and are getting better at making them too.  We covered units 1-5 last week and will work on the second half over the next 10 days or so.

 I bought a set of agar plates (petri dishes with the substrate already prepared) to do the recommended bacteria growing experiment. It is partly fun and partly gross watching the bacteria grow that we collected from various locations.

For one day's lesson we read and did the activities about the fungi kingdom. Then we looked at fungi found growing wild in our yard and talked once again about how most of them are poisonous and it is better not to try eating any of it even if they think they can identify it.  Another day we learned about the Protista kingdom. After the lesson, we looked at some fantastic videos of the protist kingdom and especially enjoyed this one on diatoms.  They are so beautiful.

Baby A's Life: 2 Months Old

This was an exciting week for Baby A.  He had his 2 month visit to the pediatrician and weighed in at 14 lbs. He had his shots which were no fun, but he seemed to recover well and didn't need any Tylenol.  The second exciting event was a visitor.  Grandpop came to stay with us.  He lives close enough that he could make a fairly quick drive and not have to worry about picking up germs along the way. He and Baby A really hit it off and even had some laughs. 

 Of course, we also had several photo sessions with Grandpop and will post some of the fabulous pictures from that later.

 The older guinea keets followed big daddy guinea and came to check out the action.

 Baby A rolled over (front to back) several times during tummy time this week.

 Big sister A showed him her newly finished pile of hair scrunchies.

Then things started to get really wild. 

 We call this Baby A's clown costume.

Farm Fresh: Refrigerator Pickles, Drying and Harvesting Herbs, Rat Update

Miss L made me a card. She thought it would make me happy:

 The rats have been on our minds. On Tuesday our pest control guy came for the one month follow-up check to see how things went with the bait boxes. I was a little worried when the first few stations showed only nibbles or no activity. Then we came to the two boxes by the rabbit tunnel and white chicken coop. BOTH EMPTY. Completely empty. He said that each bait box contained enough poison for 30 rats. That means they ate enough to kill 60 rats. I hope that finished them off.  He added some more poison and closed them back up. 
Our neighbor has been telling me he has troubles with rats as well.  I double checked with the pest control guy about spill over from the neighbors' property once we finally get rid of them and he said they won't come down to our farm. They don't travel once they find a good food source. Such a relief to know that the poison is working and we are finally coming to the end of the rat saga.  I went from being a total skeptic about paying for pest control to feeling that it was completely worth the money.

Monday's harvest:

 I made refrigerator dills -slices and spears- for the first time this week roughly according to this recipe. I used garlic scapes instead of garlic cloves, fresh dill from the garden, and multiplied the recipe by 7 to make gallon jars instead of pints. 2 days of soaking in the fridge and they are delicious deli style dill pickles.  Since we have so many cucumbers coming from the garden I also put them in my sauerkraut.

Harvested more bee balm and yarrow this week.

 I only have 3 window screens for drying, but it goes fairly quickly in the dry heat of the attic. I cleared off and processed a bunch of stinging nettle to make room for the yarrow.  To process dried nettle, I just take the leaves off the stems and pulse them in the dry blender for a few seconds. That helps them fit in jars more evenly and compact. I will use the dry flakes for making soups and stews.

 I also used some of the fresh bee balm to make an oxymel for sore throats and colds. The recipe is very simple: equal parts bee balm (leaves and flowers), honey, and cider vinegar.

When the kids had their mid summer Easter egg hunt they found some guinea eggs. I knew they were old, but thought I might as well incubate them and see whether any would hatch. We only got two keets out of the batch, but better than none. 

The dogs have a lot of funny hiding places for various weather conditions. 

Family Fun: Summer Dinners, Painting, and Shorts

We had a campfire with foil dinners for Friday fun night.  It was great except for the weather being a little too warm. 

 I can't remember the last time I made a foil dinner. College maybe or YW Girls' camp. I had to google a how-to video to remind myself of the basics.

 Saturday night was much more successful.  I made California rolls (sushi) for our family movie night and we watched "Prince Caspian". Hubby is reading all the Narnia books to the kids again and we have been watching the Disney movies after each book. I love hearing my kids say, "That wasn't in the book". Third time making sushi and I still had a little trouble getting things to stay tight, but so yummy. I have missed going out for sushi on our weekly date nights. Speaking of date night, we had our first "social distancing" double date with some church friends. We put the kids to bed and then they came over (the night of the bonfire). We chatted outside at a safe distance and made smores.

 As I mentioned last week -- painting in the basement is a regular activity.  I don't document their creations often enough. 

Here are the pictures that they took of this week's critter lodgings. 

 This one is my favorite.

Miss L and Brother S decided to get in on the sewing action (following big Sis's 4th of July fashion). They went up to the fabric bins, picked out some cotton fabrics, and requested I turn them into shorts. 

 Shorts are easy!  Thank goodness. I just traced around one of brother S's favorite pairs to make a pattern and cut out all 8 pairs during one nap time. It took about 2 more nap times to finish them off. All moms of littles measure time in naps, right?!

Farm Fresh: Bee Balm and Bee Stings

We have reached that point in the season when our focus starts to shift from planting and tending to harvest, harvest, harvest.  Big sister A helped me bring in some more yarrow this week for drying. 

  The bee balm - behind her on the left side- has grown fabulously! I need to get to work harvesting and making medicines with it as well.

 The kids have been scouting around looking for tree house locations and generally playing in the woods a lot more than usual.

That has led to some bee stings or hornet stings, neither Brother M nor Miss L have been quite sure what it was, but they were each stung 2-3 times this week! Hubby was stung last week as well. 

We are having a heatwave this weekend. Mid 90s!  Time for ice cube air conditioning.  The bunnies have no trouble with the cold. The heat can be deadly though. I try to be as kind as possible to them any time temps reach above 90 degrees.

 Their enclosures are all under tree cover and shaded the majority of the day, but it is still important to make sure that they have plenty of water.  Some times they lick their ice cube air conditioning and some times they just lay near by.  We keep evolving in our approach to this.  We used to use frozen water bottles, but they melted too fast and the buns chewed them up. Now we use freezer jam containers and just give them the actual ice cube.

Last year at the plant fair someone recommended white cherry tomatoes. Wow! They were right. They are my new favorite cherry tomato variety.

 I tried to keep it simple this year with the new baby and also not knowing how things would do in the high tunnel. The cucumbers are going crazy though. I have never had this kind of success with them before. I am going to have to do some kind of pickling. And bonus, since I control their water supply, they are much sweeter than usual.  Note to self - next year they will need a much taller trellis in the tunnel.

Monday's harvest:

 Heavy rain knocked down a couple sunflowers so we brought the blossoms in to enjoy.

 The kids were excited to point out that we already have some basketball size white squash.  I have not done anything with the squash bugs this year. It has just not been a priority. But my "keeper" varieties seem totally unphased by the bugs so far. I don't even know what the exact name of this kind is... I just keep saving their seeds and replanting them.

I have probably already raved about anise hyssop. I love it! It is a pollinator magnet. I planted more along the main garden fence this spring, and I need to spread it around more in the orchard. 
This is kinda gross, but I think it is important for our family memories. In this photo is one week's worth of dogs blowing their coats (2 brushing sessions with each dog) = a fleece worth of down underfur.  It shocks me every year.  Another week or two before they will be mostly done blowing off their underfur.  Icy's about done already and Shark still has a lot left to come out.

Baby A's Life: Week 8

Family pastime this week was trying to make baby A laugh.  It is incredibly cute. 

  Hubby is in charge of bedtime. One night this week I handed off baby A for a few minutes and came back to find this scene:

 Everyone was trying to make him laugh!

  Happy days.

  Baby A slept for 7 hours in a row one night this week. But alas, it was a fluke. He usually wakes up 2-3 times each night still.

He is getting pretty good at holding up his head.