On Glooscap's Trail...

40 foot tall sculpture of Glooscap and the kids for size reference.

We started our season on Mi'kmaq culture with a vist to the Glooscap Heritage Centre next to Millbrook. We had a guided tour of the museum and learned about precontact Mi'kmaq life all the way up to the present. We saw a short movie that was narrated in the Mi'kmaq language (with subtitles which I read to the kids) and I got leads on finding oral storytelling in Mi'kmaq

on the internet.

Our intrepeters both told us a bunch of legends.

We got to see a traditional birchbark canoe sealed with pine tar pitch that was made by a canoe builder from Bear River. We learned all about quillwork and got to try doing it on birchbark. One of the stories we heard was about porcepine got his quills.

We celebrated the wild blueberry harvest with blueberry preserves and Luski - a yummy kind of moist traditional shortbread.

We heard a lovely story about Mooin and the She Bear. In the version we were told the little boy was lost while blueberry picking and ends up being rescued and brought home to live with a she bear and her cubs (the story goes on to explain why the Mi'kmaq don't hunt she bears during winter - because their babies will be orphaned) It reminded me a little of Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

Then yesterday we went out to visit a Mennonite farm where they have newly established blueberry fields. Those in the know can come and do picking for 1.50 a pound. We picked 15 lbs and I think Sprout and Wild Thing and Nature Girl ate that much too! Nature Girl has found her calling as a commercial blueberry picker - she's fast and efficient. Over the next few days we'll eat a whole bunch with buttermilk and a bunch just by themselves, we'll dry a lot for the winter, we'll freeze some, and we'll can some as blueberry jam and spiced blueberry-peach jam. Wild Thing's are stored in the fridge in a special contain because he wants his made into jam (in the picture his are in the jar with the yellow lid).

This morning we read Blueberries for Sal. Sal looks just like Wild Thing. He loved the story.

Nature Girl is reading Peter in Blueberry Land by Elsa Beskow to him right now. She loves the Elsa Beskow books right now.