Summer Fun Continues

Just 3 weeks of summer left...wheeeeeeeeee!!

We did more fishing with friends on Tuesday and this time Robert got to come:

He's super excited about this bluegill. This is the dock at Colbert Park in Savoy.

We had 4 kids who wanted to fish and only two poles, so it was a bit of a sharing fiasco for Matthew who suddenly couldn't wait more than 2 seconds for anything that morning. In the meantime, Robert and his friend fished and James somehow "found" a piece of line all rigged up with hook, weight, and bobber (later, I learned he accidentally stole it from the instructor of our fishing clinic...the instructor saw him find it and was okay with him using it). James put bait on the hook and was fishing with just the line--NO POLE--and catching fish after fish after fish. Robert's friend couldn't catch anything. And Robert wasn't catching much, either. Something about James' technique and/or patience really worked for him that morning.

Thursday, we drove all over town collecting the last of our movie props and costumes for our family movie:

The Magnificent Tree of Lapindor!

And took a trip to the Language Acquisition Lab for Matthew to participate in a study:

He's posing with my awesome sunglasses. My first pair of sunglasses ever. Why didn't I try these things earlier?! I may never drive without them again.

And this week, we took out all but one of the fruit trees in our 8-year-old orchard out back.

Robert whacking at the peach tree. When Mathew saw the ax he was shocked, "Is that a REAL ax? To chop things? A little ax? Let me see! Whooooooooa..."

A project Robert and James could actually cooperate on!

What an accomplishment! It took days for us to take down 6 trees. The boys did 90% of the work. No power tools. I'm not looking forward to removing the stumps *groan* but it's been a great adventure.

I finally decided that I'd rather use the orchard space for more garden beds. Between the tricky weather, tree disease, insect pests, and squirrels, we weren't getting ANYTHING for my efforts. Half the trees never even bloomed. Eight years of dashed hopes is kind of my limit :(

So, my current plan is to put in three more garden beds and four or five more blueberry bushes. I've learned a lot about organic food production during my time at the farm. I want to grow some things because they taste good, some other things because they're beautiful, and a few things because they are SO stinking fun to harvest.

I'll take some measurements and draw up my plan for the shape of next year's garden. Can't wait to show you!