Jessie's family came for a little over a week with a request to help with the pumpkin harvest. As always they texted me to let me know they were on their way.
In the mornings we played games and laughed. Right away the pranks and scaring us started.
Scaring me...
And scaring Louie
Paul especially had wanted to have the children experience farm life, with all its work, harvest, home-grown food, and more. Off they went through the orchard to the farm.
The first day Louie had them pick up a huge number of pumpkins. There were a LOT!
They all got to learn to drive the tractor and pull the wagon.
They loaded it 3 times, drove it up to the driveway at the house, and then unloaded it each time, arranging the pumpkins in groups for sale and putting up signs. Every day they checked the cash box, counted the money, straightened the pumpkins, and helped customers.
Of course we had to carve pumpkins and light them every night!
They helped with a lot of jobs, and had lots of farm-to-table cooking and eating experiences too. In the mornings they collected eggs for our breakfasts.
They fed the chickens corn, squashes, and sour watermelons.
Things they picked, cooked, and ate:
plums, apples, watermelon, parsley, sage, pumpkins, okra, tomatoes,
peppers, sunflower seeds, eggs, squash, strawberries (just a few
ever-bearing), and lots of pears!
They made apple pies and each developed their own personal pie vent signature.
They also made pumpkin pies with fresh eggs and pumpkins.
We drove
out to Whitewater to see the campground we had always gone to when my kids
were little, and to see the trees turning (no autumn color anywhere they
have ever lived until recently!), had a little picnic and a hike to the lookout.
We harvested even more squashes than pumpkins!
Other things they harvested and used/sold:
corn stalks, Indian corn, and gourds.
Other random things we did:
drove the go-cart and several tractors,
looked at scary stuff after dark with the night-vision binocular, rode bikes, and helped Louie with his on-going garage
repairs.
Louie cut down a tree and cut it up. The kids and Paul operated the log-splitter and loaded, unloaded, and stacked all the fire wood. Alma's kids came too and helped.
We had a bonfire with all the brush and made s'mores that night.
The kids were a huge help with rolling out the straw mat covers over the grass Louie
had planted along the creek and in an area by the chicken coop where he
had taken out a big tree. They crawled along and pinned it down, saving
Louie's back!
Paul even requested to learn how to weld, and it turned out that he's very good at it.
The kids worked on their home-schooling.
We went out to eat and visited with cousins.
We also played more games, played dress-up, had lots of snuggles, and measured everyone on the old family stick.
Jessie and I snuck down to take a peek at her treasures from Grandma Evie. There are a LOT!
And of course there were the ever-popular videos of us sleeping!
It was so wonderful to have them here. We miss them so much when they've gone.
