at the county fair

Every year when October rolls around, the county fair opens. I always pine for the county fair of Farmer Boy, Charlotte's Web and my grandmother's stories of when her father used to show apples at the very fair we attend. Alas, the county fair has changed a bit since Almanzo's and my grandmother's time, which doesn't stop me from waxing nostalgic, but does generally give me pause about taking the entire family for an evening of expensive-game-playing, junk-food-peddling, not-particularly-enjoyable county fair.

When I heard that the county fair was free for "school day", I decided to take Finn for the morning because in my opinion, this was the perfect time to go since the fair opened 2 hours early for the school kids. The rides and gross food options were not yet in service which means only the best parts of the fair were available for enjoyment. Finn and I truly had a wonderful time, and it was almost the county fair of my fantasy. We spent the entire morning visiting farm animals, examining veggies, both large (5 lb 14.7 oz sweet potato, anyone?) and unusual, watching a border collie sheep herding, wandering through Yesterday Village, cheering for racing (and swimming) swine, feeding goats (and you know how he loves the goats!), and participating in a fire safety exercise that included escaping from a smoky room through a window (very exciting!) Hooray for a brisk autumn morning spent at a nostalgia-satiating county fair!

farm day

Today our favorite local sheep and goat farms had their open farm day. We look forward to these twice yearly visits to our farms, as we've come to think of them. I might like the autumn farm days just a wee bit better though because the sheep farm always has other local fiber farms join them for a fiber festival.


Lots of spinning, wool, yarn, animals, quilts, wood-turned bowls, hand-carved spoons and animals...so many beautiful handmade things to capture our attention.



Not to mention ice cream from the local dairy!


As autumn blew in and dropped our temperatures by more than 20 degrees, we enjoyed an breezy October day with the sheep and their lovely wool.


The local folk musicians are always quite a hit, as well.


Finn walked around telling everyone who would listen, "my mama used the coats from these sheep, it's called wool, to make my hat!" (which wasn't exactly true, but we have made plenty of items from the wool of these particular sheep!)


After we'd had our fill of the sheep and spent our last dime on the wool, we headed over to visit with the goats for a while.



Finn enjoys the sheep, but he really has love for the goats. He calls them and they amble over, letting him rub their ears on his cheek and pet their heads for as long as he's interested.


I think Finn would have stayed here with this particular goat all afternoon if the older boys of some of our friends wouldn't have lured him toward the chickens. (Whoa, hat hair!)


We admired the chickens for some time.


Then we even visited some of the roosting ladies.

And laughed and a few who kept flying around the yard at top speed.

What a fun day at the farm! I'm so glad that we've been able to spend so much time getting to know these farms and their wonderful occupants.

{this moment} - a family game

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

leaf learnin'

I haven't shared much about our homeschooling endeavors lately, but Finn and I have so enjoyed the leaf unit we've been working on this week that I thought I'd show you a bit of what we've been working on. As autumn starts to cool our air and bring the slightest hint of color to our trees, Finn and I have been studying the leaves that will soon be changing and falling all around us.

Almost everything we've done this week has had a hint of autumnal leaf to it, which seems to suit Finn just fine. We've collected several leaves from our yard.


And compared those leaves to our leaf guide.



We've made numerous crayon rubbings over leaves.


Then we compared the rubbings to the leaves and especially looked at the vein structure to see how much showed through on the crayon rubbing.


We baked a "leaf loaf" of sourdough bread, which we enjoyed with peach jam harvested just a few weeks ago.


We colored pictures of trees, identifying the roots, trunk, branches and leaves each with a different color.


We learned the parts of a leaf and colored them.


Finn can read the word tree so we made a worksheet for him to read and practice writing tree. (Finn loves worksheets and flies through them as quickly as I print them, but I try to keep them on topic and relevant to what he is learning so that he continues to enjoy them.)


We did some wet-on-wet watercolor painting of leaf colors and then traced one of our maple leaves on the dried painting.


Finn drew veins on his watercolor leaves.


And we hung the watercolor leaves in the window over the nature table.

This time of year seems to inspire so much learning and creativity. I think we might extend our leaf learnin' for another week and find more fun leaf projects to enjoy.

Yarn Along

Joining Ginny for Yarn Along this week, I have 2 projects that I'm working on alternately. The other sock to match the one I recently finished and a bookmark from More Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I just started reading Swiss Family Robinson to the older kids and they are really enjoying the adventures and trials of the family stranded on the deserted island. I think a family movie night to watch the classic will be in order when we've finished the book.

I've knitted the bookmark before and it really is a nice woven-looking bookmark that I might try to embroider this time. We shall see.


I also finished the scarf from last week and blocked it. I think the diamond rib pattern turned out lovely with this yarn, and I can't wait to gift it to it's intended recipient. :)

a meal fit for an Ingalls

When we decided to have a special meal for the arrival of autumn, I thought it would be around a fire, but since the weather didn't cooperate, we needed a new plan.

A warm and cozy meal around the fire is wonderful, but a homey meal in a cozy kitchen during an autumn rain is a pretty fine plan as well. This is not our first foray into Ingalls' cooking, but since I stumbled upon the Little House Cookbook at the library recently, an Ingalls-style meal seemed like a good way to celebrate the advent of autumn on a rainy day. From the cookbook, we chose the buckwheat pancakes, fried potatoes and fried apples'n'onions as our autumn meal.

Then [Pa sat] down, as they urged him, and lifting the blanket cake on the untouched pile, he slipped from under it a section of the stack of hot, syrupy pancakes. Royal forked a brown slice of ham from the frying pan onto Pa's plate and Almanzo filled his coffee cup. "You boys certainly live in the lap of luxury," Pa remarked. The pancakes were no ordinary buckwheat pancakes. Almanzo followed his mother's pancake rule and the cakes were light as foam, soaked through with melted brown sugar. ~ The Long Winter

Outdoors was crisp and cold. Sunshine gilded the frosty windows, and in the house everyone was hearty and cheerful. How the travelers did enjoy that breakfast! The praised everything they ate. The biscuits were light and flaky, the fried potatoes were brown, and the slices of fat pork were thin and crisp, and the gravy was smooth and brown and creamy. ~ By The Shores Of Silver Lake

They talked about spareribs, and turkey with dressing, and baked beans, and crackling cornbread and other good things. But Almanzo said that what he liked most in the world was fried apples'n'onions. When at last they went in to dinner, there on the table was a big dish of them! Mother knew what he liked best, and she had cooked it for him. ~ Farmer Boy

The kids were mildly suspicious of the brown sugar layered between the buckwheat pancakes instead of maple syrup and very suspicious of the fried apples'n'onions. Everyone was game for trying each dish, and almost everything was quite enjoyed. A winning meal in my book!

I'm pretty sure that the Ingalls never ate ketchup, but after finding this recipe for homemade ketchup, I really wanted to try it so we inaugurated it with the potatoes at our Little House meal. A little more tangy than regular ketchup, it was pretty well received, and I do believe it will become a staple around here.