Farm Crawling: Getting Your Goat

We hope to have sheep or goats someday. This was a neat milking parlor set up. The goats were very kind to Lil'Bug and the goat cheese so very yummy. It didn't keep well in the fridge though, much to my disappointment.

Farm Crawling: Don't Worry, Bee Happy

Many of you who know me, know that I love bees. I used to be a little afraid of them, I used to get stung. My husband and daughter are bee charmers, which I thought was a biological thing. I have since come to the suspicion that it is more of a learned fear issue. I can't tickle bees like Dearest Husband can but they crawl on me and then fly away. We have an apiary set up in our basement (don't worry, vacant) and it is one of the few things moving with us.

Of course we explored the apiaries at one of the farms:

This is a friendly hive, the farmer informed us:

This one is more grouchy. The more grouchy ones are placed farther out in the fields away from the tour traffic. Perhaps they are grouchy from just being honey harvested?

This is a freshly scraped honey comb.


I can't wait to bee on a farm!

Farm Crawling: Meeting Thanksgiving Dinner

I have this thing about food. I like to meet my food, or at least know the people who have cared for it. I like eating happy pigs. There is accountability that way for all of us.

Have you ever toured a factory or mass producing meat place? The animals can be forced fed, kept in small pens, force bred, treated like animals, and then lined up for slaughter. Conveyor belt processing of their carcass into food. Chicken nuggets for example: made from chicken slurry. OMG. Yuck.

Anyway, we found this great event through an announcemnt on our locl homeschool idea board: the farm crawl.

This is Lily meeting the father of our Thanksgiving dinner (I hope we order in time!)


This is Lily viewing the flock in which we hope to get our heritage breed Turkey. Yum.


I'll post more, see the following posts. :)

Friday Freewrite: Suprise!

I promised my students that I would do the Friday Freewrites too, since they are tortured weekly by having to, um, write for a writing class. Fair is fair. This week's freewrite is about how I would react to a surprise party that I knew about. Would I play along? Would I ruin it?

I would be really flattered if someone threw a surprise party for me, but I probably would end up canceling out on the pretend thing they'd try to use to get me there. I've been bad about that lately (sorry Heather!). Oh, but if I knew about it? Then I would just really fret about the social aspect, but I would play along. I would also buy a box of Stam's for the offending organizers!

Really, I'm not a fan of surprises. I like to know. I like to know just about everything I can about a situation before going in. As a youngster I used to map out how I thought phone conversations (topics, questions) were supposed to go before calling friends. I still hate calling people. If I didn't have email I'd never leave the house!

I will find out if the baby is a boy or girl if I can. I like to know as much as possible and there are so many unknowns in life. Some people say there are too few surprises left in life....I say good. I like to know.