Our Second Week at the Farm

Life here on the farm is settling down and gaining speed all at the same time. We are still exploring our surroundings and learning about the new things around us but also adding back in our school work. I have instituted a new rule that no one can visit the cows or the creek until all of their school work has been completed. Guess whose children are now completing their school work in record times? All 4 of the older girls are done with their school work by noon each day with no whining or complaining. That is pretty amazing considering there were days in Jersey where we were still doing school work at 7pm! Who knew cows were so motivating?

We are currently studying botany for science and spent our week learning about float beds and planting our seeds for our garden this summer.

While we were working on the float bed containers my aunt found a frog. I told her that if she found any tadpoles we would very much like to have them. She texted me a few days later that she had found some frog eggs so we loaded up the van and drove over to my cousins farm (a whole 5 minutes down the road) and went exploring.

We did in fact find frog eggs and brought a few back home. I was shocked at the difference just one day made in the development of the little embryos. I put the little eggs in a lunch meat container until we could find a larger container to hold them as they grow into little frogs.

No trip to hunt for frog eggs is complete without a random cow blocking your way home. We met a very nice gentleman while we were trying to get around the cow in the road who of course had to comment on our Jersey plates. Seems we stick out even when we stay in the car!

I started to worry that our frog eggs were duds and wouldn't hatch. I texted my aunt and wouldn’t you know it she knew where some tadpoles were that had already hatched. So off we went on another adventure to find living tadpoles.

We were able to borrow a small aquarium from my parents and filled it with our living tadpoles.

Also on the science front this week we had an impromptu bumble bee class. I found this little guy in the basement of the farmhouse and he was pretty miserable. I have no idea how he got down there but it wasn’t even close to the correct environment for him. I trapped him and brought him up for the girls to inspect. They of course wanted me to kill it (we have been killing wasps all month). So we had a quick class about the benefits of bees (and how wasps are the devil), inspected his various parts and pieces, and talked about pollination before we let him go in the backyard.

The twins completed their first full week of My Father’s World Kindergarten this week. It was kind of funny that the week was all about the sun and it has rained just about every day. I am working up a post concerning our first full week using our new kindergarten curriculum.

With all of the rain we had plenty of time to get settled into our new home. My aunt left us several milk crates to use as we needed around the house for storage. I decided to use 4 of them in the kitchen for a makeshift pantry. I love having the vertical storage and apparently my children think it is pretty cool as well.

Another of my rainy day projects was to finish an embroidery project I have been working on. I plan to turn the square into a pillow down the line.

Overall we have had a pretty quiet week on the farm. We got lots of school work done and still had time to do some visiting with the cows……..oh and family of course!

We look forward to sharing the rest of our farm adventures with you!