Yesterday we skipped FPS and practised the fine art of ‘home schooling’.

Although I am not sure you can call it home schooling at someone else’s home.  Can you?

Anyway.  

We went past Lu and Paddy’s farm in Dunkeld after our long weekend at the Port Fairy Folk Festival.

Lesson 1.  Science/Home Economics/Maths/Physical Education

In a nutshell we got to help with extracting honey from the new beehive.  So we learnt about bees and how the hive is organised.  And how to make smoke in the smoker (pine needles) to get the bees out of the box.  And we worked hard to turn the handle that spun the frames to extract the honey.  

  
And ate honey straight from the hive (lots of it) and spat out the wax, and made honey and banana milkshakes.

We estimated how much honey we had extracted and filled jars and tubs.  About 2 kg per frame.  We emptied 8 frames.  That’s quite a lot of honey!

  
I tell you, home schooling would be so easy if someone was around to run honey extraction activities each day.

Lesson 2.  Anatomy/Agricultural Management/Driving/Physics

  
Then we went out with Paddy on the back of the farm ute to feed the sheep (it’s been a long dry summer).

We learnt how to spot the rams. And that there is a ratio of about 70 mummies to each daddy (and some further discussion along these lines) in the paddocks at the moment.

We looked at a sheep whose strapped up broken leg was healing.  We looked at the last of the fat lambs, and the sheep being bred for the lambs to become the future mummy sheep on the farm.

  
And then the children (7,9 and 11 years old) got to drive the ute.  Which they LOVED.  And I bumped along on the back as they hit potholes.  This was the physics aspect of the home schooling adventure.  So much learning packed in with so much fun!

 

 
And we ate veggies that we picked from the garden too!  Zucchini and tomato and parsley.  

One thing’s for sure, my kids know where food comes from.  Meat and veggies.  And honey and fruit.  And eggs.  It’s so ace having friends and family with farms.

 

 
Thanks Paddy. Thanks Lu. Thanks Ella and Bonnie.  See you soon we hope!