Happy Birthday Brother S!

Brother S wanted Chinese food for his birthday dinner: dumplings, egg rolls, and orange chicken. Quite a feast!

 He also requested cheesecake for dessert. 

His best buddy mailed him a birthday present since they couldn't get together. 

And he used some birthday money from the grandparents to buy a Hot Wheels megaladon race track.

Here he is opening his cards.  Thank you grandparents!!! 

Farm Fresh: Preparing for Frost

 There was a frost warning for Friday so I quickly completed our annual fig tree insulation ritual.  

I pruned out a number of branches before I tried to get the fencing around it. It grew tremendously well this year, but I know from past experience that the outer branches won't survive unless they are well insulated. Here it is before pruning:

Here it is after I took out all the outer branches and cross overs. The idea was to create room for the maple leaf insulation to get around the scaffolding branches.   

Two years ago we put all the fall leaves in the main garden. Last year we put them in the high tunnel.  This year, I decided we should put them all in the orchard, both for nourishment and to try to kill most of the grass with leaves and mulch.  The kids had to help rake and take leaves to the front orchard instead of their usual Saturday cleaning chores. 

Levels of enthusiasm for this project varied considerably. These leaves were very wet and heavy-- good for composting. Hubby will come behind with the tractor and bag more of them up when they are dry. 

My new little Brown Turkey fig tree is going to be the guinea pig for an experiment.  I planted it next to a south facing wall in the nook near our chimney.  I want to see whether the ambient heat and windbreak will be enough to keep the branches alive overwinter.  (If it fails, the branches will die and the fig will have to regrow from the ground again.)

Those lovely flowers around the base are a perennial that my French host sisters gave me. Behind them are some shasta daisies that should also be beautiful next year. 

The Pawpaw trees grew well this year though I doubt we will have any fruit for at least another year. 

Deer ate my hostas. So frustrating. I'm a little annoyed that my guard dogs let this happen. 

I put the sides down on the high tunnel. 

I gathered many of the pumpkins -- some went into the high tunnel for a little more curing. 

Some I left for the cousins to pick as part of the Halloween shindig:

Some I brought into the kitchen for baking treats.  I love how much meat is in these sweet potato pumpkins.

While I cleared the ground in the pumpkin patch, I found 4 praying mantis nests in the weeds.  I tucked them in along the fences.

The sweet potato patch is on the agenda for later this month.  I want to give the frost a chance to sweeten them first. 

Halloween 2020

 The kids have been planning a Halloween shindig with their cousins for weeks. They are in our pod so we don't worry too much about masks etc. while visiting with them.  We moved it to Wednesday evening because Thursday was supposed to (and did) rain all day. 

As soon as the cousins arrived they all got dressed up in their regalia. Almost all of these items were things we had on hand in the dress-up trunk. 

Three Little Witches:

Two Mad Scientists and a Scientist-turned-zombie:

One Avenger:

A Zombie and a Woodcutter:

They painted the signs for the event about 10 days before.

The Little Witches had their station in the gazebo. They gave out candy. 

The Zombie rose from the grave to join the Mad Scientists' station.

The Scientists had some fabulous treats made by Big Sister A.  Zombie serum:

Monster toes:

Brother M was the Woodcutter from a scary cub scout story.  He told a spooky story at his booth and gave out candy. 

Brother S, the Zombie whose name was Zumba, had a candy station near the front yard where they tried to play zombie tag in the dark. He made paper ghosts that were hanging in the tree branches. 

Baby A was the cutest little pumpkin.

Thursday night we went to the cousins' house and watched "Haunted Mansion" in their basement theatre. Friday night our old neighbors invited us over to have a campfire and help test out the tree house that they are building.

Halloween night the kids chose "Ghostbusters" for family movie night.  We had homemade homegrown chicken soup followed by popcorn and ice cream sundaes. 

Family Schooling: Pumpkins and Entomology

We crossed into real fall temperatures this week with the first freeze warning. Brother M has become the master of the wood stove --bringing in the wood, making and keeping the fires burning. 

Big Sister A is continuing to practice her doughnut making skills. These are whole wheat with a slightly minty glaze and the holes had chocolate hazelnut glaze. 

One of our science units was about entomologist  Jean-Henri Fabre.  We have already read several of his books. The Story Book of Science is a bit outdated now (100 years old!), but his down-to-earth way of explaining things is perfect for kids. 

We also did a unit on ants and were supposed to make an ant farm. I decided not to order it though. We have been experimenting with the sugar ants in our dining room all summer. The kids even made a little floor buffet for them at one point. No poisoning allowed -- I just had to wait it out until they hibernated. Brother S has been reading Questions and Answers About Ants as his read-aloud book and we read it again all the way through to go with this unit.  I love Millicent Selsam's science books. Also vintage, the library had none, so I ordered a bunch from Thrift Books.  Similar to Fabre, they are extremely detailed, but the writing is simple and clear. 

We also reread our all time favorite pumpkin story again this week.

Big Sister A entered a fall photo contest to win some free outfits from Kidpik. She has reached that point... She is spending her money on clothes. So grown up.