Making Pan Pipes STEP TWO

Papa Pan and Nature Girl learning about pitch and panpipes.

Make notes about the different notes you want to make and approximate lengths to cut pipes.

Papa Pan helps Nature Girl with cutting because she only has one arm.

Next they experimented with drying them in the oven.

GOLDENROD DOES NOT CAUSE HAYFEVER!

I put a comment on this in the post on our goldenrod wildcrafting but I think it is important enough to give a whole post to.

This is taken from an About.com article on ragweed.

Ragweed Allergy:

As with so many plants considered baneful in the 21st century, giant ragweed was used medicinally by the denizens of tougher eras. But when one thinks of the plant nowadays, one thing comes to mind, and that is "ragweed allergy." Together, common ragweed and giant ragweed account for most of the hay fever experienced in North America in the fall. Symptoms of ragweed allergy are sneezing and runny nose, along with itchy eyes.

Goldenrod, another weed, is commonly blamed for causing this "hay fever." But goldenrod is merely a victim of circumstance: it just happens to bloom at the same time of year (late summer-early fall) as ragweed. Being by far the more conspicuous of the two, goldenrod has become the scapegoat for ragweed allergy. The fact is that goldenrod pollen is sticky and can be spread only by insects, not the wind. By contrast, ragweed pollen floats off easily on the gentlest of breezes -- much to the regret of your sinuses!

Making Panpipes STEP ONE

Gather a local plant that offers a hollow pith. Papa Pan used the saw and we chose Japanes Knotweed because it's green in the fall still, in spring we'd pick sturdier willow.

Nature Girl with young growth. See how it looks like bamboo.

Nature Girl uses pruning shears to trim off little side branches and leaves. Watch you don't snip off your fingers!

A clean branch ready to come home.

Wildcrafting Lesson - Golden Rod

Golden rod is really easy to identify. There are plenty of individual varieties of it, but they all work the same way. If you get autumn honey chances are it's goldenrod honey. Besides smelling sweet and looking pretty it's good for coughs and colds, and for urinary tract infections. It's a gentle herb and easy to put up.

First you snip it up with scissors.

You fill a jar with your snipped up pieces. To check to see if you have too little, too much, or just the right amount bounce your finger fairies on the bed of flowers. Too little, the finger fairy falls through. Too much and there's no bounce, just right it is soft and springy and you stay on top.

Then you fill it to the brim with apple cider vinegar. It's already turning yellow! Cover it, label it and put in a dark closet for about a month, then strain. You can add your goldenrod vinegar to meals and salad dressings or take it with honey!

Nature's flu shot!

If we had access to a school like the Lewes New School Homeschooling Wouldn't be Necessary

Butternut

Butternut leaves drying for tea

Butternuts drying out so we can crack them to get out the meat.

Our neighbour Summer, who owns Pumpkin Moon Herbals, http://www.pumpkinmoonherbals.com/ invited us over to harvest her butternuts (white walnuts). She explained that the leaves made a really nice tea and that medicinally an infusion was good for constipation. She needed to do a bit of pruning so we brought home whole branches to dry. The nutshells are good as a vermifuge (they expel WORMS) So we'll be using EVERYTHING we brought home.

The butternut is a native species and the Mi'kmaq used it medicinally, for food, and as a natural brown dye. We'll be dying a silk with nutshells.

The butternut is threatened by a non native blight and Summer explained to us that organic farmers and herbalists should make a point of planting butternut trees to ensure they aren't an endangered species. It really is a wonderful tree!

Open Farm Day Monty Python's Apple Orchard

Richard Hennigar is absolutely passionate about organic sustainable orchards. His orchards produce the kid's favorite treat - Suprima (Shivers) popsicles. His other passion is Trancendental Meditation (http://www.tm.org) We visited his orchard and learned all about his farming practices. They're very different than the big commercial orchards that spray that surround Wolfville!

A big part of orchard management is taking the time to study what is going on in your orchard and the surrounding environment. Richard has these flypapers sprinkled through the orchard. They allow him to keep track of a single fly called the "Apple Maggot Fly" They have black zigzags on their wings. This one had caught one fly. We learned about the fly's life cycle and how they can devastate an orchard without proper management. Management here does not mean spraying. So Richard has worked very hard to get rid of neglected abandoned apple trees and hawthorne trees within a kilometre of his orchard. The province used to help out by giving apple tree owners an ultimatum - pick up your fallen apples, spray your trees, cut down your trees, or they'll cut them down for you. They don't anymore though. So Richard and other organic growers take it upon themselves to find and weed out the problem trees.

Because Richard doesn't mow his orchards (more on this!) he has HUGE anthills in the orchard. Ants are more important than worms to soil health, they aerate dry soils earthworms can't touch and they mine minerals to bring to the surface - like sulphur.

This video explains how Richard manages the grass in his orchard without any fossil fuels. It takes12 hours to flatten an acre, but it only needs to be done once a season and the grasses enrich the soil as a natural mulch.

Here are the kids helping Richard flatten his grasses. I can see why he doesn't hire children to roll out the grass, but they sure had fun!

We learned that the fallen apples get sold to big juice producers. The waste left over from pressing cider gets sold to an organic pig producer nearby. Nothing goes to waste in the orchard.

We got to try all sorts of apples and ended our visit with popsicles!

Open Farm Day - a few more favorites from Hidden Meadow Farm

The dinosaur chicken runs with babies on her back..

The puffball is indeed another chicken!

Muscovy ducks look particularly strange when caught with a flash!

More of Wild Things absolute favorite chickens.

Open Farm Day- Hidden Meadow Departure

On the way out we passed the flock of sheep again.

Curiously, they no longer ran from the sight of us.

Judging from the bold black faced ewe here ....

I think we smelled like her dad and she knew we were good people...baa ram ewe!

Open Farm Day - Hidden Meadow Chickens

We spent the most time with the chickens. We all love chickens, but Wild Thing most of all!

Crazy chicken who looks like a dinosaur!

Pretty little chickens, just right!

Look at that face.

He's asking them if they miss their mommy and daddy and would they like to come home with him.

*SNIFF!*

I think I know what he's getting for his birthday next year!

Open Farm Day - Hidden Meadow Horses

A team of Belgians took us on a ride through the woods to the hidden meadow the farm is named after.

They had a wonderful time, but Sprout and Wild Thing got into an altercation when Sprout hit him over the head with a rubber boot we forced him to wear.

The horses chilled everyone out though.

Nature Girl is petitioning me to sell the minivan and get a team of belgians and a haywagon instead.

Open Farm Day - Hidden Meadow Food

Happy free range pigs. It might have been a mistake to let the kids watch Babe this week. We eat these guys.

Belted Galloway Cow. We eat these guys too, but they really don't have as much personality as the pigs.

Big freaky heritage breed turkey with little normal wild eastern turkeys. He and Wild Thing had words.

Wild Thing is singing a little song he titled "I'm not afraid of you turkey!" Note distance from turkey. Wild Thing doesn't mind at all that we might eat this guy.

Open Farm Day - Hidden Meadow - Arrival

We got a late start to the day and only had time to visit two farms. We started at Hidden Meadow because they have heritage breeds of sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and cattle. Our first encounter was with a herd of Cotswold Sheep that ran away from us.

So I took a picture of them with a bunch of carrots, that were guaranteed not to run away. Don't they look thrilled?

Things picked up! In the barn Nature Girl and Wellington the Cotswold Ram became friends. He acted like our dog, after head rubs, he hadn't had enough and kicked his stall door and bleated for more. Nature Girl got more and more adventurous in petting Wellington. If she could have gone in the stall I would have had pictures of her rubbing his belly by the end! They LOVED each other!

These are the Scottish Highland Cattle. We eat these guys. They are about the size of St Bernards, wider though.