Adventures of Spring

Spring has sprung, as they say. I love the warm weather, the color of green appearing, and the flowers and trees in bloom. I must say though, the pollen I am allergic to gives me great headaches. Eventually the allergic reaction will wear off, after the pollen clears out and the plants settle into their "routine". The sap buckets, tubing, and tanks are still presently being taken out of the woods, washed and put away. It is a tiresome chore that unfortunately doesn't generate any income, but must be done. Arlow gets impatient about trying to get this all done, so he can move onto other projects. The greenhouse is still awaiting the beginning of spring planting. I hesitate to start too many seedlings, as it requires a fastidious steward all of the time. With homeschooling back into my schedule, I don't seem to have as much to time to complete everything.
Speaking of such, we've been having great adventures together with homeschooling. Now that it is warmer out, we like taking little walks outside and call them our "nature study" portion of our school day. Last Fall we collected some black swallowtail caterpillars that were on the parsley plants and put them in a glass vase. They promptly turned into chrysallises, and we looked at them that way, stuck on sticks, all Winter. One day recently, Luke noticed that one had popped out. Then another, then another. We had fun watching one break out, dry its wings, then we let it go outside on a nice warm day. That was education in action! We also enjoyed a recent trip to a local park that has a pond, that was absolutely teeming with life! The toads were all there mating, I had never seen so many in one spot. There were turtles, tadpoles and polliwogs, Koi fish and smaller fish. There were frog eggs and salamander eggs in a vernal pool in the woods. The kids had a blast trying to catch all manner of pond life. Our own pond here is full of salamanders, frogs, tadpoles, and frog eggs. We used to have some bass fish in our pond, but one day awhile ago now,they all suddenly disappeared. It has been a mystery as to how it happened, there could be many causes. But when they were there, it seemed like they ate all of the eggs and tadpoles.
Our next farming adventure/homeschool project is to go to Tractor Supply and purchase a few baby chickens. Years ago we had up to 25 chickens and used to sell the eggs. We got rid of them when the hens were getting too old to lay well, Winter was approaching, and nobody seemed to want to take care of them. It's been awhile since we've had hens, but I think it would be good to at least have a few for the fresh eggs, and for the kids to have a real farm experience outside of sugaring and growing crops. I'm just hoping we don't end up with a bunch of roosters. Luke asked me why are roosters bad, and I basically said because: 1. They don't lay eggs 2. They tend to fight and peck others, and 3. They are loud and obnoxious. Of course he immediately replied that we couldn't have fertilized eggs for baby chickens without one! Oh well. I'll let you know how this next adventure formulates.