Kid Projects: Pollinator Waterers, Bird Houses, Baking and Photography

 Baby A is a happy guy and keeps us all laughing with his antics. The kids love giving him foods to try, like pickles.

He is also learning to be a good little forager. Here he is helping himself to some anise hyssop (naturally sweet like licorice), while I was weeding.

We visited Beiler's Gourd Farm while we were on our most recent Lancaster trip.  They are a wholesaler of gourds of all shapes and sizes.  They had all the materials on hand to make fancy bird houses and carved gourd lights.  We went for the birdhouses this time.  Maybe we'll try carving some lights later in the year. 

Here is brother M using the leather dye method on his bird house gourd:

Big Sister A used a combination of the ink dye and leather dye to create a beautiful pattern on her bird house.

Here it is mostly finished.  We still need to spray them with a couple coats of lacquer to protect them from the elements and then hang them up with strands of leather. 

Another craft project that the kids put together were these pollinator watering stations. It's so sad to find them drowned in the duck pool. This way bees and butterflies have a safe place to land for a drink of water. 

We put three of them in the high tunnel since I want to attract lots of pollinators to come in, despite it being under cover. 

Brother M loves his Beardie. He does a great job caring for him and is very responsible about gathering bugs for him every night. 

Brother M also loves watching and taking pictures of bugs. Here are some of his recent bee pictures:

We did some deep cleaning projects this week and one of them was to pull everything out of all cupboards and drawers in the kitchen and give the cupboards/drawers a scrub. When we did that big sister A discovered some baking supplies that she'd forgotten about (fondant and cutters for fondant).

That got her in a cake making mood and she made this rhubarb vanilla cake for us.

Not to be out done the boys made this excellent pickle car.