Our neighbor has two free range chickens wandering from their yard on the corner to our lot. We welcome them because we have had a terrible year for grasshoppers and the chickens are efficient hunters. My only problem with them is they do their dust bath in our landscape dirt and it gets all over the sidewalk. Oh well, a small price to pay for reducing the insect population. There is a white and a black bird. The white one is Amy. She will come up to you and stand there while you scratch her between the wings. The kids certainly enjoyed their company. Note the thank you from Amy on Megan's dress (it cleaned out with washing).
Erik thought it was great fun to catch grasshoppers and throw them by Amy. She attacked the hoppers with a vengeance.
As I mentioned, the chickens wander around and we have found that their egg laying habits are a bit on the nomadic side. Erik found these two in our compost pile and yes, they became target practice. Erik was the great hunter in our garden by keeping the grasshopper population under control with Soren's BB gun (thanks Soren).
It was great fun having the children at our home for three days. I know the head of maintenance at the Casco ice cream factory by Richmond so we went there on a tour. We watched the Cascos being made as well as the Fat Boys (I eat less of those because of that name). We did enjoy a Christmas variety Casco (peppermint candy in the chocolate covering) as they came off of the production line. The ice cream forming process is automated but the Cascos are hand dipped eight at a time and then are packaged.
Who knows -- maybe the factory tour hats are being converted for bee catching. The cage in Erik's hand contained the Monarch caterpillar that we found out in Benson when we were on our way home from the ice cream factory.
I stopped on my way home from swimming early Tuesday morning to gather some wheat stalks that had been missed during harvest. At breakfast, I asked the kids what was in their bread. They said flour and I said where did that come from? Wheat was their answer. This old farm boy wants to make sure his city slicker grandchildren know a few things about farming. They rubbed the heads of wheat between their hands to harvest it. We later planted a few seeds in cups and then ground the remaining seeds in our mill. We took it home to show their folks.
We made puzzles, played in the back yard, visited my folks, went fishing, rode bikes, got the mail, picked our Gala apples, and just generally had fun. Megan enjoys playing by herself. I took this video in one of those moments.
No stay at Grandma's is complete without going to her school room. Erik and Claire were very good helpers all one afternoon. Claire even wrote about the broccoli bunny -- a story that Louise tells every time that we have broccoli with their family.
No comments:
Post a Comment