HSF Education: Fall Homeschool Class Week 6

What on the farm is soft, crimp, warm, elastic and fire resistant?  Answer: Wool.

Sheep Shearing day at HSF today! Did you know there are methods of shearing that date back to the 1800s?  Today we got to spend some time observing sheep shearing and watching hoof trimming Thank you Rich for sharing your knowledge of sheep with us as you worked!

The cold early morning turned into a sunny late morning and we planted garlic in the sunbeams.  Back in the dirt again, we made space for things to pop up in spring. Your food lesson today, sponsored by garlic, is:

“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian;

Wine and tarragon make it French.

Sour cream makes it Russian;

Lemon and cinnamon make it Greek.

Soy Sauce makes it Chinese;

Garlic makes it good.”

– Alice May Brock

HSF Education: Fall Homeschool Class Week 3

Today we got scientific..  We pulled up chairs and observed 77 chickens in their environment.  We observed their diet, their breed, their behavior and their biology.  From eggs to bones, indoors and outdoors, we looked at every part of the chicken today and their prevalence in our lives.  We collected laid eggs, we made a killer frittata and also boiled down a chicken stock with vegetables from the garden, then we even ground up dried up chicken bones and spread their bone meal in the garden bed to nourish the soil for next years plants.  Thank you, chickens. You do a lot for us.

HSF Education: Fall Homeschool Class Week 2

I always feel like I’m “saving the Earth” when I plant a tree.  Today, we looked at the symbiosis of a food forest system: Tall trees, small trees, shrubs, herbs and ground cover.  Then we contributed to the system by planting fruit trees near the herbs and other edibles that rest on a slope, so water naturally moves toward them.  We’ll continue to watch this area grow as we move through the seasons.  

Later in the morning, we harvested concord grapes from the vine.  These are my favorite fruit with perfect sweetness and a matching tartness.  Around the table we sat and cut them open to remove the seeds and prepared them for baking.  We each went home with a bag of muffins.