365 TV-free Activities: Day 1, Bas Relief Pancakes (#18)

Today we began our year-long project with Bas Relief Pancakes, suggestion #18 from 365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do With Your Child. These pancake are more of an example of inlay than bas relief. When I think of bas relief art, I think of a coin. These pancakes have a smooth surface.

First, you pour* your "shape". I won't say what Henry was trying to make this resemble, but let's all be relieved it didn't work out as he planned.

Then, defeat all invisible foes with high-flying helicopter kicks.

After the edges of your "shape" firm up a little, add a new ladle of pancake batter over the "design".

Then, chill on the floor while your brother hovers with a spatula.

Flip the whole thing when the bubbles have risen to the surface and popped, if you can wait that long. Here, Henry is mad a bas relief for inadequately conveying his vision.

Just call it an eight, champ.

My "star" and "flower"

look more like an amoeba with a cape, and a sand dollar.

George wants his dad's help with

Pancake Zero!

Thomas made a leaf, and you know what? Yes! I see it.

Wearing out the shift key today. My "whale".

R(?) is for(?) Rebekah(?)

*Our pancake batter recipe was pretty basic, from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. 2 c. flour, 1 T. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 T. sugar, 2 eggs, 2 c. milk, 2 T. vegetable oil.

Brainstorms: Flipping the Script

Ah, (late) Spring! When we dust off everything that got all dusty during winter, rub our crusty eyes, yawn and stretch and start school.* Yep. Backyard University is flipping the script. We see no reason to commence in fall and break in late spring. That's just when we're getting started! There's more light. The weather is nicer. The adults are more energetic. The garden is exciting. It feels like a beginning, which is why saying good-bye to teachers and learning activities at this point in years past always seemed strange to me. After many long dark months in which leaving the house is a painful chore, we are suddenly on our own when the sun is out and everyone finally feels like going here and there? No. This is the new time, and for us here at the BU, ~Spring is the new Fall!~

And, while we're at it, ~Saturday is the new Monday!~

Real Talk: Most of the week is less than productive. When you factor in every daily obligation, there's little time to do lots of prolonged active learning projects. There's one adult here, and she's just trying to scrape up the usual chaos sprinkles of daily life most of the time. The weekend holds more promise. The mathematician is home, and the conversations and projects can go on uninterrupted, for the most part.

Speaking of projects, we're happy to announce the initiation of the launching of an idea. We're going to blog our way through this book.

You'd think blogging your way through something would require hipwaders, but no. I might still wear mine, but that's beside the point. This book requires just a few basic craft supplies, time, bored kids of a variety of ages, and grown-ups. We have all of that (and so much more), and are going to give it our best shot.

We're going to go for an average of one activity per day for a whole year, starting this Sunday, with the Bas-Relief Pancakes (#18). The activities range from simple to very involved, so rather than do them in order, we'll choose them according to the seasons, weather, and our needs. We reserve the right to double up and and do two or more simple activities one day, if we need to make up a day. Not all of them will be discussed here on the blog. Sometimes, we'll just post a photo or status update on the Backyard University facebook page. You "liked" that already, right? Good.

*We practice a rare form of unschooling called Secretly Maniuplated Living, and it really goes on 24/7/52. It is powered by the superfuel that is a kid's internal motivation, and somewhat supported by attending grown-up masterminds who put said kids into situations where they can pick up grade-level skills and concepts said grown-ups looked up on the Oregon Department of Education Common Core State Standards page. Shh! Don't tell the little ones. They just love to cut and glue. They don't know they mastered key fine motor skills.

Tails and Tidings: Regrets, I Can't Really Think of Any

It was with a heavy heart that we said good-bye to Cora and Candy yesterday. A few weeks ago, Cora crowed, loudly, and in the most roostery fashion. Then Candy. And then they both just kept crowing and growing the kind of feathers and features that only roosters have. A quick email to the Urban Farm Store, with a couple of attached pictures, confirmed that they are males. As backyard chickeneers, we had no choice but to send them packing. We can't have cock-a-doodle-doos, and we can't have fertilized eggs, so it was time to say farewell.

Do I sound sad? I am, sort of. I mean, we all wish they were hens. There's that. We would have loved for our false impressions of these birds to be..not false. Is it ever easy to say good-bye to someone you love? Probably not.

Still, we're trying to be pretend farmer types here, and it wouldn't do to get too mopey over the transient nature of a life lived among many other living things. In the immortal words of MC Lyte, "No one on earth is promised tomorrow. Believe that!"

The reality always was that we had two little roosters in the making. We bought them, brought them home, named them, fed them, loved them, and learned from them. We were ignorant of a reality, and that's all that has changed in the last few days. Knowing their gender didn't make me love Cora and Candy less, but it made me realize that what I thought might be many years with them was actually going to be just a few months. So, I thought something was true, and it turns out it wasn't. Something else was true.

I hope Candy and, now, Corey had what a cockerel* thinks of as a good time during their stint at Backyard University. Having to send them on their way at this point isn't what we planned, but "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." John Lennon said that. And how can one regret life? I really have to rack my brain and my heart and my soul to find something resembling regret for anything in my life, and I have trouble finding it.

*What you call a chick that won't ever give you any eggs, but instead will make lots of noise and grow up to pick fights with your children.

Don't get me wrong. There are so many things that I Would Do Differently If I Knew Then What I Know Now. Does that count as regret? To me, it doesn't because I think regret sounds like a certainty. If I go around now, not knowing what I'm doing, what makes me think I can be so sure I know what I should have done instead? Now I know that we bought two roosters. If I had known their gender 14 weeks ago, I wouldn't have bought them, but what might I have done instead? Would that have been so great? I can't say for sure.

Take a look at their faces. Do they look sad, or stoic?* Do they look like the kind of people who cry over crowing pullets (or would have blogged about it?) That man's eyes are punk rock, yelling "Bring it!" at life. The woman is ever vigilant, checking the horizon for predators. They know what most of us don't.

Don't expect me to tell you what it is they know, as I come from suburbs and shopping malls, so I'm part of the rest of us that doesn't know what they know. I never faced starvation. As a wannabe fauxrmer, I can't help but feel silly about the little ups and downs of Backyard University. Yay! We grew a pumpkin! (hopefully, in a couple of months) Look! An egg! (hopefully, in a couple of months) But if there's a late frost, or a blight, or a rooster, we have nothing but a moment of feeling bummed out. We don't have to subsist on boiled sawdust and tears, like the couple in the painting.

*Stoic is what wise people feel instead of sad.

No, the biggest loss we have to mourn is our opinion of The Urban Farm Store. They boast a 90% accuracy rate in chick sexing.* Maybe we were just unlucky, but we could have gotten a 50/50 gender split by picking chicks on a tossed coin. On the website, they also say they can take back a rooster, should you find yourself with one, but they offer no refunds. Fine, we knew that going in, so I didn't really expect one. They were easy to contact and offered to take the roosters back right away, so on that front they followed through, but I was kind of hoping for a little something more. Something like, "Oh, we sold you four chicks and only two of them were keepable? Wow. Sorry, here's a bag of feed, or another chick, or a break on the price of a $20 pullet. Nope. Nothing. No refunds, no nothing.

*What you call it when you figure out whether your chick is really a dude or not.

After returning Candy (read on to find out what happened to the Chicken Formerly Known As Cora), I walked around the store, peeking in the brooders at the fluffy puffs of cute cheepy love that are chicks, and felt a little mad at the store. I heard excited new customers picking their breeds and I wanted to warn them. I read the description cards about which breeds were good layers and I thought of what terrible layers roosters are, of any breed. What incentive does the Urban Farm Store have to make sure their chicks really are girls? In a little yard outside the store, they sell pullets (teenage girl chickens) for a whopping $20 apiece, so if anything, they can hope for a little extra money if they sell boy chicks with reckless abandon. Sure, we'll take your rooster back, now just have a stroll to the back of the store and pick an over-priced pullet to fill that void in your flock. It'd be a kicker to find out if they end up getting money for the roosters somewhere else. Thanks for raising our meat birds, suckers!

When I first called them to order my chicks, I was planning to play it safe. I knew the closest thing to a sure bet was a sex-link chicken, meaning their gender is linked to their markings, so it's easier to distinguish the she-chickens from the beginning.The store employee who took my order asked why I was ordering four Black Stars*. He recommended getting four different breeds. I admit, I didn't take much convincing, because I really wanted to see what the other breeds were all about. I trusted their chick sexing skills and decided to go for it. We all know how that went.

* What you call a Black Sex Link to avoid saying the s-e-x word.

Enough brooding! That's an inside joke and you'd have to be a chickenhead to get it. The day of pondering regret and roosters and sloppy business practices ended in a big pretty bright place known as Casa de Crowe.

This is Tawnya, and she swooped in to save the day with a charitable chicken trade offer. She said she could give a home to one of our cockerels, and we could even have one of her pullets to boot! Can I get three cheers for this awesome mom of three delightful brilliant homeschooled li'l Crowes? Three cheers for them too, while we're at it! The only catch is, Corey has to behave himself. Casa de Crowe does not tolerate roosters behaving badly and Corey needs to toe the line, or else. Yes. That. This is farm rules. You gots to mind your manners, or you gets it.

When Corey was introduced to the Crowe flock of Barred Rock pullets, he put on the most spectacular rooster show, flaring his neck feathers and getting right in on the the pecking order decision committee. He pecked and was pecked. It was all very natural. Tawnya said he settled in later and seems happy now.

Speaking of settling in, we are getting acquainted with Pippi, the Barred Rock pullet we gained in the trade. She was the littlest one of her flock and is quick! I put her in a box to take her home and she popped out before I could shut the lid! Tawnya quickly and firmly grasped her tail feathers and gently held down her lower back (like the lady in the painting above probably did a thousand times) and Pippi settled down immediately. She's in her yard with Lenore and Hot Sauce, and they have also been establishing their pecking order, albeit in a much less showy fashion.

Her markings are so similar to Lenore's, just a little more pronounced. She looks like a tiny intense version of Lenore. I watched Lenore, Pippi and Hot Sauce for a minute. They looked different than the sight I'm used to seeing. All dark colors, no more brightness of the boys. Yet, in the real world of reality, we gained a hen today. There used to be four chickens, and now there are three, but we ended up with more hens. I'll take that, and I'll be thankful for the good people in the world, like Tawnya.

Mister Rogers by George

Making music.

Fred was having something about music.

It was bass violin, because it was playing.

Sam played the tuba and the french horn and the trumpet and the slide trombone.

All of them, like that.

Notes.

Played something.

And, something was making the bass violins play something.

The movie had the flexotone.

I see the drum for Mister Rogers.

He talked to Yo-Yo Ma.

Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello.

Bass violin.

Cello.

The violin zinned.

Lady Elaine plays the accordion.

Good writing, George.

Thank You!

And King Friday was playing the bass violin.

The Muddy Kitchen: Fried Fruit Kebabs by Henry

I decided one night to make fried fruit and vegetable kebabs. I got together some apples, kiwis, pears, bananas, mushrooms, and cucumbers. I didn't know exactly what I was doing, but I coated a few apple wedges in butter and put them on the grill. This didn't work as well as I hoped, so we had pasta for dinner that night.

Henry's mom interjects: While Henry's dad made the pasta, I ate the pieces of grilled apple and thought, "Henry is on to something. We need to try again. So I told him not to give up on his dream of fried fruit."
Later that night, my mom came up to me and gave me the idea of deep-fried fruit. We decided to try it on Saturday. I cut up the rest of the fruit and mixed up this batter. I started with a few fruits for a test. It comes in a great variety of kiwi, banana, apple, and pear. When you eat the fried apple, it tastes just like a little apple pie in your mouth. The banana, when deep-fried, has a creamy texture. The pear has a gentle flavor, and the kiwi leaves a tangy taste in your mouth.

I started with the apples.

I stuck one on a skewer and slopped it around in the batter, until it was fully coated. I submerged it in the hot oil and waited for about 4 minutes. After they were done, I rolled them in the cinnamon sugar (plus a pinch of salt). I took a bite, it was delicious! Next I tried the bananas. I used the same method and gave it to my mom. She loved it! Then I went for the pear. It was very good. The kiwi almost got nixed, because I thought it would end up tasting very bad. But my mom said "You don't know how it'll turn out, so you should try." It ended up tasting very good! We did a few more fruits, so we all got to taste some.

After I fried up the rest of the fruit, I put them on these kebabs. After that, I put them on a plate, added some popcorn and we all sat down to watch a movie. We also made plans to build our empire, selling fried fruit.