Mercer Museum and Fonthill Castle

Brother M went on a cousins trip with GMama and GpaJ to New Jersey and NYC.  He had a lot of fun visiting with Great Grandpa Bob and learning about all of his inventions.  He also got to see Harry Potter the musical on Broadway, which was a big treat. 

Grandpa J met me half way in Doylestown, PA so that I could pick up Brother M and we could visit some amazing museums there. First, we visited the Mercer Museum, which Henry Mercer built to house his collection of artifacts. He felt that the tools of the working people told the story of their lives better than the writings of wars and big events did.  That really speaks to me.  I spend a lot of time with a hoe or a kitchen bowl in my hands. 

The museum is seven floors of artifacts and machinery from the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

I loved the collection of pottery.  These are just the kinds of pieces that I would like to make in my pottery class. 

They had a room that was called The General Store.  I loved the ladle gourds and baskets. 

The tools of farmers with little machinery. For a small scale farmer like me, I feel like these are still quite efficient. 

Butter molds.  Butter was a treat and they made it look beautiful. 

Printing fabric with wood cuts and wax.

Baby A loved the interactive kitchen area.  They showed the way that foods were packaged and sold back in the early 1900s. 

Mr Mercer was a tile manufacturer and had a lot of molds and patterns for creating tiles in his museum.

Then we went to Mr. Mercer's home, Fonthill Castle. 

It is quite unique and had a lot of eccentric features.  

Number one amazing feature, was the awesome collection and variety of tiles used throughout the house. And a close second was the vast number of books that Mr. Mercer collected over the years.  And I thought we had a lot of books.  I think she said that he has 70,000 in his collection.

Lots of cute nooks and crannies and passageways. 

Mr. Mercer was a bachelor and was very attached to his dogs. There is a painting of him in the upper right corner here:

Our very careful troop of tourists.  We had to be careful with baby A among all the machines and unsafe railings in the museum and in the house we were not allowed to touch anything. Our guide was quite nervous about the children messing things up.  It's all out there instead of being behind glass. Still it was a wonderful tour and I am so glad to have finally been able to see it. 

 

June Farmers

 

June is a busy month for farmers, even on a small scale.  The garden is in full swing and the kids are all doing their parts to help. 

Brother M made a tunnel through our buckwheat cover crop before pulling it all down and laying it out to decompose. 

Baby A had his first sour cherry picking experience.  He was pretty disappointed about the flavor.  He loved harvesting strawberries, raspberries, and especially blueberries and popping them in his mouth.

The high tunnel is turning into a squash jungle. Summer squash are coming in by the bushel every other day. The winter squash is filling every available inch.  Actually, a lot more since this picture was taken.  It's hard to walk in there now. 

The zinnia border is a delight. I love seeing it out my kitchen window every day. 

Big sister A has planned a series of volleyball nights for one of her children and youth goals.  Daddy is helping with coaching and set-up. 

He loves playing with balls on the trampoline. 

Despite my steps STILL not being finished.  The front flower and herb borders are also a daily delight for me. 

The freezer had a melt down and I had a canning spree trying to make everything shelf stable that couldn't fit into our other freezer. 

Brother S loves making our easy guacamole.  Mash avocados and add our tomatillo salsa until it tastes good.

Raspberry eater.

Tired after a fun day playing with Kirche (our friends' German Shepherd) and harvesting bamboo for a project.

Slowly hauling all the rocks out of my pathway so that I can finish it.  Some of them are huge. 

Lots of canning, baking, and dehydrating happening to preserve our harvests. 

This is 8 lbs of rhubarb that I used for juice and fruit leather. 

Homegrown salads.  Each new crop gives me ideas of fun ways to mix up the flavors. 

Mama muscovy hatched 4 ducklings and we gave them to our neighbors. We are looking forward to her next hatching. 

Brother M is breeding some rabbits to enter in the Meat Pen category at the county fair. We are also going to sell some rabbits at the fair this year. 

One artichoke is all I have to show for this year.  

Raspberry shortcake with whole wheat biscuits and yogurt.

These are some nice sized squash.  We have had a lot of big boats lately.  It is hard to keep up with and find them all on a daily basis. 

Batch #1 of Stinging nettle dried and ready for powdering. 

One of the kids favorite chores is continuously harvesting the zinnias.  The more we pick the bushier and more flowers the plants get.  

I built two new rabbit tractors for the orchard.  The orchard is one place where it makes sense for us to let the rabbits graze and deposit their manure -- since we hope to have permaculture plantings throughout that area (eventually). It takes a long time to cover that much space with plantings and beds. These bunnies were potential carriers of snuffles so we wanted to separate them from the herd either way. So far they have shown no signs of having it! That is great and means that we can breed them. 

Baby A is 2!

Hard to believe my fiery red head is 2!  The big kids wrapped his presents and then coached him on how to unwrap them. 

He loved his cards. 

Thank you to all the grandparents!!  

For his birthday, he went to the John Deere store with daddy.  They sat on all the big tractors and looked at all the tractor toys.  He came home with a little tractor of his own to sit on and some ice cream!

 Baby A is our best napper.  He usually takes a 3 hour nap every afternoon.  I think he takes after daddy. 

He likes to help with projects.  We ordered a rabbit tractor (and now have a second one on the way , since we liked it so much). The kids helped me improve the weather proofing with some leftover SW duration paint from when we painted the barn. 

The bunnies approve of their new digs. 

The rabbit tractor is nice and lightweight, easy to move and gives good access to the grass. I only wish that it had bit more shade.  We will need to rig up something for the front half as it gets hotter. 

We also celebrated my birthday with a family weeding day. The kids did a great job clearing beds for my birthday present. 

Silly big and little brothers playing in the harvest baskets. 

Big sister A went on her first solo trip to visit the cousins in Florida.  It has all gone well so far. Before she left we had a mad dash of supporting her finishing her schoolwork.  We had set some deadlines for her to complete before she could leave.  Unfortunately, her procrastination made for a couple of very stressful days.  I hope she learned her lesson. 

One of the projects was building a fairly authentic Native American dwelling and then writing a report on what the effort taught you.  I contributed some rabbit pelts and her friend came over to offer her support. 

Cats watching the people hard at work in the garden. 

My smelly corner. Lilacs, then choisya blossoms, and then roses. Yummy!

Our cat with the broken leg has recovered beautifully.  Two weeks of R&R in the basement, plus comfrey salve twice a day, and she is almost as good as new.  No 5K surgery or amputation required. 

The peonies were lovely by my garden gate.