The Schoolhouse Log: November 2011

The first week of November was notable for the clear skies and dark nights - because no-one had electricity for 5 days after the snow at the end of October! The storm brought down a lot of trees and the power company contracted in teams from surrounding states to help with the clean-up.

We all picked apples for Grow-A-Row, at Longmeadow Farm. The weather in November was often quite beautiful, and the trees still held a lot of late-season apples; after October, people are thinking about Thanksgiving and won't come and pick for themselves, so it isn't worth the farm trying to sell them. The volunteers picked literally thousands of pounds of fruit, right from the trees, instead of sorting out the fallen apples.  It is easier on the knees and a lot faster!

This is also our month of preparation for our Christmas celebrations at church. We had the first rehearsals of the nativity play. This year we have 28 children taking part - more than double our numbers from last year. Phil and Lorna dyed many new silks and Lorna began the long process of stitching them together (by hand) to create the children's costumes. The church was decorated, and a Thanksgiving breakfast at the Vienna Community Center was enjoyed by both the communities that our pastor serves.

In preparation for Thanksgiving, Lorna, and friend Carol, attended a cornucopia flower-arranging workshop at a local library.  Fun was had, and they came home with beautiful decorations for our Thanksgiving tables. Fernanda, and her son Armand, joined us for a Thanksgiving meal and brought some very tasty additions to our menu. It was lovely to spend time relaxing and chatting. The meat was a rooster from another friend - Heather. Actually it was the egg from one of our hens, that Heather hatched in Spring, for her children's school. This year, they were mostly pure-bred Specked Sussex, and only the males had a good hatch rate. Roosters usually start friendly, and then turn aggressive as they mature, so when they started turning on her children, Phil took them back. We still have one, and he is being nice to Phil...so far!

November marked a number of milestones for Jack.

He completed the animated movie of his book "Terror of Porridge", which can be viewed below.

Jack also completed all the requirements for his online high school, Clonlara, so he can graduate in January. We started the year as a homeschooling parents and are ending it by returning to just parenting again! Jack is thoroughly enjoying community college. He has been achieving high scores for chemistry and his other credit this semester.  In January he will take Psychology, English Comprehension I, Poetry, a computing class and a fiction writing class, for a total of 15 credits. This is the recommended amount for a student to take in a semester, so we shall see how Jack copes with this.

Lorna and Phil were featured in "Dirt" magazine,

where an article about our schoolhouse can be found under the section " born again". At time of writing, you could still read it here; enjoy the photos. I think we are living our dream!

We always purchase our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, and this year was no different. It was great to catch up with Deb and Les, who run Walnut Grove Farm, where they grow entirely organic produce - incluing Christmas trees. We also were able to visit with Liz Jackson, who lives right around the corner from Les and Deb. Liz's house burned down a couple of years ago, and it was wonderful to see her new house and catch up with her after so long.