With harvest season upon us, I've taken to creating activities for Daniel and I to enjoy that demonstrate the cycle of life as well as the connection between plants, their fruit, and how we prepare the fruit at home as food. We went apple picking two times. The first time we used most of the apples to make applesauce,which he loved. We also ate some of the apples sliced with sunflower seed butter. This was the first time he could be convinced to eat a sliced apple, in no small part to his pride in having picked the apples himself. When we finished the batch of applesause he asked if we could go pick more apples. It was definitely more costly to pick the apples ourselves, but I thought it worth it. The newest batch is destined to be apple crisp and apple pie, which he wants to help me make as well. He delighted in searching the apple trees in the orchard for the “perfect” apples. He was quite discerning and sad to when we reached our picking limit.
This past Sunday we went to a local farm for a wagon ride out to their pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins. It was a warm fall afternoon, the foliage in full golden hue. When we got to the patch we found three fairly round, good-sized pumpkins in good condition rather quickly and I stayed with them while Daniel insisted they keep looking for more. They ambled about the sizable patch for a while, eventually coming back, having decided that we indeed had the three best. We boarded the tractor-drawn wagon for a ride back to the farm stand. There we also got some butternut quash and some milk for dinner.
Today Daniel was excited, waiting all day for dad to arrive home so we could “scarf” the pumpkins together. We read the book, “The Pink Pumpkin” that we'd gotten at a different local farm, while anticipating the evening ahead. Daniel had such a good time! We opened the pumpkins and pulled out the seeds, which were saved and we later baked. (We did this at our homeschool co-op last week, so Daniel was familiar with this and explained to David what we were doing.) We then selected our pumpkin saws and our patterns and went to work. Daniel merrily chatted away throughout, delighted to have an active role in the carving process, albeit carefully supervised. When we were done I took some pictures. He was very proud of the work and asked if he could take some pictures too. First I gave him my camera, then found his camera and he delighted in taking pictures of his handiwork, as well as our dog, David, and I for the next half hour or so. A late night for Daniel, but a fun evening the family will remember.
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