This and That and a Hurricane

A few days ago Adam came in the house and said, "Guess what?" And he showed me the first two pecans he'd picked up this season.

We each ate one. They were large and well-fleshed and tasty. 

Quite a young, chewy pecan, if you know what I mean.

What is that new drapery over the back door, you ask? Did I mention that Adam found a torn weather balloon in our field? He did. There it is. I had fun taking that in to work and showing it to the kids and teaching them a little about weather balloons. I'm constantly looking for anything that might be interesting and educational to them. They enjoy seeing and touching anything that they've never seen before. I enjoy letting them guess what it is before I tell them.
Take this food sieve for instance. I found it at the local thrift store for $5.

I used one of those 20 years ago in Iowa to make grape jelly. An elderly friend brought a box of her own grapes to me, with her sieve. That was fun! I also have a food mill that I used to make applesauce. I suppose they serve similar purposes.
In addition to the sieve and the food mill, I took these wooden items to show the kids:

The bottom one, of course, is a sock darner. But the middle one? For years I wondered what it really was. I used it to darn socks, but it's a bit long. Neither the top nor the middle item really works as a rolling pin -- although I think my mother always described the top item as my great-grandmother's rolling pin. As I researched these items a bit online, I discovered that both the longer ones are pestles! Think of how large the mortars would've been, that they were used with. For the kids to understand what a pestle is, I took in Adam's quite-heavy stone set with a sprinkling of crushed allspice in it. I passed the mortar around for them to smell. Such experiences are important with children. As a teacher, you toss out to them dozens (even hundreds) of little experiences, little pieces of information, little sensory appeals. A few of them embed deeply in a few children's minds and take root and grow. You never know which ones.

A chicken in Beaufort is ready for the foul weather.

Rain gear will soon be in vogue here on the farm. Hurricane Matthew is coming this weekend. It will probably bear down on us sometime Saturday night/Sunday morning. We haven't lived through a bad hurricane since we moved here in 2012, but Hurricane Irene did horrible damage in 2011 just before we arrived. Our farm is a bit of a low spot. Much depends on wind direction, wind tides up the rivers and creeks, how fast the storm is moving, and how much rainfall it dumps on us before it moves on. I'll keep you posted as long as I have internet connection to do so.