Gettysburg, PA: Marsh Creek

The Goobs were in the creek within five minutes of parking at the campground.

They were soon out again, but only because they wanted their swimsuits.

If we're not out on the battlefield, they're in the creek.  They've been having a fantastic time, though JellyMan seems to fall down an awful lot.  (I think he must do it on purpose, but I just smile benignly and go back to my book and my peach iced tea with vodka.)

Other mothers have been giving me dirty looks because now THEIR children want to play in the creek.  I know how they feel.  Anything could be in that creek - parasites, fishing hooks, human waste, pesticide, leeches, water moccasins.  Yes, they're right to be concerned.

They should get themselves some peach iced tea and put some vodka in it.  That'd calm 'em down.

Vacation

Because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (and it doesn't do Jill any favors, either.)

Will Work For Food

The Goobs are still hard at work here on the farm.  The planting is over, but the weeding is a neverending task, and the cows need constant attention.  The poor things even have to pick their own snacks - they spent yesterday afternoon picking cherries.

I have to admit that I haven't done much of anything since I arrived.  Well, I did take a pretty picture of a Deptford pink yesterday:

Dianthus armeria

And that, good friends and neighbors, is about all I've accomplished this week.  I'm so good at doing nothing that I might just keep right on doing it.

Gnadenhutten, OH

We woke up to pouring rain one joyful morning this week, and it didn't take long to convince Dad and Uncle Bo that The Goobers and I NEEDED to see Gnadenhutten.  Gnadenhutten (that's German for "Huts of Peace") is the oldest extant settlement in Ohio.  It began as a Moravian missionary village, and was the site of the Gnadenhutten Massacre, a heartbreaking chapter in history involving the murder of nearly 100 innocent Native Americans by a vengeful militia.  So.  Rain and blood.  Blood and rain.  Good old fashioned fun, I say, and my Goobs agree.

I first read about Gnadenhutten in one of my absolute favorite books - That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley, by Allan W. Eckert.  I've mentioned it before, but I'm going to mention it again because it is just that good.  If you live in the Ohio River Valley you should run out and buy this book immediately, because it's great fun to exclaim, "Hey! That's McCulloch's Leap!" as you're driving through Wheeling.  But it would be a great book even if you live in Colorado.  Read it.

Oh, here we are! There's a museum! I love museums!

Closed! Cousin JimBob said, "What, didn't you call first?" Why, no, Cousin JimBob, I didn't. I checked the website, just like any normal person would do, and trusted that the museum would be open during the stated operating hours. And so I drank the dregs from the bitter cup of disappointment. But such is life in the Ohio Valley.  Folks from the Ohio River Valley are familiar with bitter disappointment, so we all recovered nicely.  Besides, I read the pertinent pages from That Dark and Bloody River to everyone on the way, so we were all caught up. We knew a lot more than what is posted on these signs:

Anemone was so impressed with the story of Gnadenhutten that she wrote a synopsis of it in her journal.  And I am so impressed with her being impressed (she's my "I hate history!" baby) that I am posting what she wrote here.

Gnadenhutten, Ohio: 1782

Colonel Williamson and his militiamen were marching, looking for an Indian killing party that had been terrorizing settlements.  When they crossed the Ohio River, they found Private Robert Wallace's wife, Jane, and their infant daughter, Sarah Jane.  They had been tomahawked, scalped and stripped, and impaled on stakes, face up.  They had probably been left there as a warning to the militia.  The soldiers sadly wrapped the two in a blanket and buried them together.  They made a vow to get revenge.

A few days later, Williiamson sent Captain Charles Bilderback to scout.  Bilderback came across several Indians from Gnadenhutten working in the fields and immediately killed them.  Meanwhile, Col. Williams came to the Tuscarawas river across from Gnadenhutten.  They crossed the river and found a number of Indians working in a cornfield.  He told them that he had been sent there to bring them back to Fort Pitt.  He asked them to put down their weapons, and the Indians agreed.  Abraham, the Indian leader, told Williamson that there were fifty more of his people in Salem.  Williamson told him to send runners to fetch them and bring them back.

Robert Wallace saw that one of the Indian women was wearing Jane's bloodstained dress they got when trading with the war party.  There was a vote to excecute all of the Indians, whether they were innocent or not.  The militiamen tied the Indian's hands and feet together and put the men in one buiding and the women and children in another.  Then the runners came back with the people from Salem, and the militiamen took them and tied them up and put them inside with the others.

Williamson waited until next morning so the Indians, who were Christians, could pray and sing for the rest of the night.  In the morning, each Indian was tomahawked and scalped, even the women and the children.  The night before, two children named Thomas and Abel worked all night to free themselves and sat so the militiamen would think they were still tied up.  Thomas pretended to already be tomahawked, and he was only scalped.  The soldier who tomahawked Abel ran out to throw up and left the door open.  Thomas ran through the door and kept running.

In the other cabin, three children named Adam, Esther and Peter crawled into a cellar.  They tried to open the door to the outside, but it was stuck.  After killing the Indians, the militiamen set the buildings on fire.  The children decided to crawl out a tiny window next to the door.  Adam and Esther went out first, but when Peter tried he got stuck inside it.  The building crumpled, and Peter was buried inside.  Adam and Ester ran to Schoenbrunn to warn the other Moravians there.

Isn't she great?

Here is the burial mound.  There were several bunches of flowers left on the other side.  I want you all (well, just The Man, really) to notice and be impressed by my first attempt at merging two pictures in PSE6, even though it looks horrible.  Seriously.  Tell me how cool I am and buy me the full version of Photoshop as a reward.

Here is a more impressive monument to the Indian dead.  The obelisk reads: 

HERE
TRIUMPHED IN DEATH
NINETY
CHRISTIAN INDIANS
MARCH 8, 1782
GNADENHUTTEN

Jeez. I just noticed Anemone is wearing her favorite shirt. Again. I'm going to start calling it her field shirt. She wore it HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.  Well, she can't wear it anymore because it caught on a nail and tore out at the farm.  I tried to be sorry, but I'm not.  Not really.

This is a strange thing to place a marker for, isn't it?  The building is a recreation of the mission house, but it was as locked up as the museum.  Bummer.

There is also a beautiful old cemetery surrounding the historical park, and we had a lovely time walking through and admiring the headstones.  JellyMan says he wants a crypt when he dies.  I told him he'd better hold off on dying, because if he dies on my watch he's getting a wooden board with "BOY" carved into it.  And that's if he's lucky.

Since we had already come so far, we decided to visit Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten's sister village, as well.  This stupid internet connection makes me reluctant to blog about it, but you can read the sanitized story HERE. 

Ruby Throated Hummingbird

female Archilochus colubris

A blog, you say? What's that?

I haven't been online lately because I've been busy with my family and the farm and homeschool (boy, am I regretting taking two months off for Christmas!) and relaxing after several months of constant Goober activity.  There are a lot of things I miss about living in town (Taco Bell and DSL, for instance) but sitting in my car for hours each day waiting for The Goobs to be finished with whatever it is that they're doing is NOT one of them.  Okay, now for some updates!

We're nearing the end of our school year, and we are not as far along as I'd like.  The Goobs have both finished their math and grammar books, which is good, but neither one of them has finished their Latin and JellyMan is only about halfway through Classical Writing.  That isn't good at all.  For history we have been watching Ken Burns' Civil War series, and we will follow that up with a trip to Gettysburg.  JellyMan is memorizing Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Anemone is learning The Battle Hymn of the Republic.  For science we've been insect collecting and bird watching.  (Yeah, I know.  But we left the dissection equipment at home.  I couldn't quite bring myself to spend 11 hours trapped in a car with sheep brains.)  We have seen some good stuff - Baltimore orioles, bluebirds, hawks, owls and barn swallows, and I was able to get this picture of a pair of goldfinches that hang around my mom's porch.

We've been busy with the garden; The Goobs have planted beans, corn, pumpkins and gourds and have tilled and weeded and staked and watered.  They painted a few flower pots for toad houses - we've seen several and they look like they could use a permanent residence.  The men have been out making hay while the sun shines, and we had a lot of excitement when the new bull made his appearance (more about that later.)  We've had wienie roasts with the family and hikes through the woods on our own, and we've hunted coyote and pinned insects and got stuck in the mud.  The Goobs have made solo trips on the four wheeler and the truck.  We've seen at least fifty deer (including a dead fawn gripped in the jaws of a wolf hybrid) and we've managed to avoid the ticks.  The guys at the feed store know our names, we're caught up with all the doings of the cousins and we're all sunburned.  In short, it's been just another trip home.

And now I'm off to look at tractors.  Woo-hoo.

Got Milk?

The (unfair) Distribution of Labor

Gender inequality is alive and well here on the farm.  If you are a man, you work. If you are a girl, you stay out of the way.  (A boy becomes a man at age 13 on the farm, but once a girl, always a girl.) Poor old JellyMan is the low man on the totem pole, so he gets all the jobs everyone else is too busy to do, like tilling the garden.

While JellyMan is tilling, Anemone (being a girl) is off in a field chasing butterflies.

The next item on JellyMan's list is to prop up the asparagus ferns.  They're so tall that they are falling over - I had no idea they would grow so much!

While JellyMan is propping up the asparagus, Anemone (being a girl) is off in a field chasing butterflies.

Next on JellyMan's hit parade is the bean planting.  Planting beans is a pain.  First you mark off five rows with stakes and twine.  Then you get a stick and make a little furrow down the whole row.  Then you drop in your beans, and then you go back along the row covering the seeds.

While JellyMan is planting the beans, Anemone (being a girl) is off in a field chasing butterflies.

JellyMan is finally finished in the garden, so he hightails it over to the barn to clean up the hay feeders.  The pasture is so hilly that if you drop a round bale of hay, the cows end up rolling it down the hill, and it gets trampled and ruined, so you drop the hay in a feeder instead.  (But sometimes Dad drops a bale in the pasture so the cows can play with it.  They have a great time.)  There are several feeders, and two of them were scheduled to be scraped and painted. 

While JellyMan is scraping the feeders, Anemone (being a girl) is off in a field chasing butterflies.

JellyMan is finally finished with his chores.  He's tired and hungry, but he's a good boy man and he shares his carrots with Puppy and the girls.

Oh, would you look at that!  Wonders never cease.  While JellyMan is off visiting the cows, Anemone (being a girl) is planting the corn, which is an even bigger pain than planting the beans.

The times, they are a-changin'!

Work Order #321

The Goobs have been working overtime since our arrival at the farm.  This particular work order took them two days to finish - one to clean the picnic table, and one to paint it.  I think they enjoyed it, though.  I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a weekend. 

They will find out just how good they had it tomorrow morning, when they find themselves out by the barn scrubbing the feeders.  Buh-lah.

One Mess Out of Many

One of the reasons I haven't been blogging is because I had to get the house ready for my parents to visit.  The whole place looked something like this:

I love my Anemone, but she is out of control.  She's in there somewhere pretending to do her math, but really she's looking through cookbooks for a good way to mess up my kitchen.