Top carrot?

A PTA sign-up form came home the other week offering me a double-sided closely-typed page of opportunities to volunteer my time.  One option was to join the school's Healthy Kids Committee, part of a districtwide effort to persuade children to eat vegetables.  A lost cause as far as my kids are concerned, but I can but dream, so I ticked the box.

The HKC has a big week coming up soon, with special events tied to local farms and the farmers' market, and a fresh produce collection for the "Squash Hunger" food drive.  Anyway, one thing the school team requires is a five foot carrot to chart the number of pounds of produce donated - a bit like those giant church-roof-fund thermometers you see around.  Guess who volunteered to make it?

But here's the thing.  Other people are vying for the job.  I know of at least two others with their eye on that carrot.  It makes me feel rather insecure about my carrot-making talents - what if my carrot is a bit weedy compared to what they could have produced, and they spend the rest of the year tutting and shaking their heads whenever I pass by?  Perhaps I should just relinquish the carrot right now...

Meanwhile, bizarrely, I've been receiving emails from the kids' former school requesting detailed instructions on how to run a tombola (and even one hopeful message begging me to come back and run it myself at an upcoming fair - Nooooooo! was my reply).  It seems I really did start a tradition there.  Would you credit it?

Bitter chocolate

I had business at the local High School today.  I was there to show a film about chocolate - one I'd seen at the Fair Trade conference the other week, about child slavery on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast.  Heavy stuff, but the students gathered all have an interest in social justice issues and they watched attentively. 

About halfway through I sensed some of them were close to tears - which came as no surprise as it was during a scene that always gets to me, too.  The price of a child is discussed: about 230 euros ($320, or £200), before haggling.  The price includes transportation from a neighbouring country, plus indefinite use of the child.  The children, forced into hard and dangerous labour, are rarely if ever paid.

Those kids are typically about the same age as my Girl and Boy.

There was no time today for discussion after the film.  So I'll be back there next week, with a fellow FT advocate, to follow up.  I'm really interested to know what they all made of it.

Any US-based readers who'd like to see the movie can get hold of it for free here.  I urge you to do so.

Mad Math

Write an algebraic expression to represent the total number of silver dollars that could be in a 24-gallon tank.  Let d = number of silver dollars.

Data: Silver dollar (a type of fish) is 8" in length.

This is my 10 year old daughter's math homework.  Can you make any sense of it?  We can't.  A prize if you can get any kind of answer at all.

The Man is kinda down about it. That and missing out on the Nobel prize for Physics yet again.

What we need is a Maths Expert.  Preferably one with fish-keeping experience.

Appley ever after

The upshot of all that apple-picking yesterday is that we now have a lot of apples.  I used a tiny fraction of them today in these rather yummy cinnamon-apple muffins (and in another half dozen that have already been eaten).  Tomorrow maybe I'll bake a pie, then perhaps a crumble, and the day after that...  Your apple suggestions, please.

While we were out in the orchard, the Girl was with one of her friends visiting another farm, finding her way through a corn maze and going on a hayride to pick pumpkins.  She came home with two very nice pumpkins which we'll no doubt carve into something evil-looking before the month is out. 

And the Boy was with his friend gathering a haul of a different kind.

It was billed as a "family fun day" sponsored by a bank, and seemed mostly to involve different agencies, like the NY State Police, handing out freebies hand over fist.  All the mini flashlights and pens etc are inscribed with messages about things like DWI (Driving While Intoxicated), safe sex and looking after your kidneys.  Not that the Boy minds what's written on them, he's just no-end happy to have a really cool collection of ...stuff.

All for Fall

After a morning of yardwork, the Man and I went apple-picking this afternoon at Indian Ladder Farms.  Unlike when we go to pick strawberries, we weren't the only ones there.  In fact most of the Capital District had arrived before us and the place was teeming. 

I find it quite charming how everyone around here celebrates the season by picking apples.   Though even more than that they like to sample apple-cider donuts - here's just a portion of the queue patiently waiting for those deep-fried delicacies. 

On account of the recent rain, many of the apples had been harvested a few days ago and we were invited to "pick" them from crates like this:

Though we did do some more traditional-style picking, too:

And then there were the gourds, so many and varied:

And big!  "Gourd"on Bennett! Guess the weight of this monster pumpkin:

Deluge 2

We had a full morning, what with a visit to the local farmers' market (where the Girl is greeted like the regular customer she is at the cafe stall where she always orders a plate of fresh home-fries), and a quick trip to the mall (where ice-skates are not yet available), and between times a look-in on this place:

The Man was there yesterday along with this party, and thought it was a sight the rest of us should see.  Cohoes Falls aren't necessarily always so impressive at this time of year, but you'll remember we've just had quite a lot of rain...

This afternoon there has been swimming and skating at the Y, followed by playdates for some and yardwork for others.  The Man and I spent a while tidying the pool.  The guy's coming to close it this week, not a moment too soon before it completely fills up with leaves.

Deluged

When I said it was pouring with rain yesterday I really didn't know what I was talking about.  Turns out  it was barely spitting compared to the torrents of water that fell overnight and first thing this morning.  It was as if all the rain we hadn't had over the summer had suddenly decided to fall in one go.  I believe in some parts of the country (North Carolina?) they've actually had the equivalent of their entire normal annual rainfall just in the last couple of days.  We put out the Boy's new rain gauge yesterday, but it was overflowing this morning.  The weather station at the local High School (where they probably look after their equipment more conscientiously) recorded 4.84 inches overnight - at a rate of up to 1 inch per hour.

I know I've already mentioned homework this week, but I have to say it's a real relief to get to Friday and not have to make anyone do any.  And a lot about this new school makes me suspect that its objectives are as much about training parents as children - there seem to be endless charts and notes I have to remember to initial, and don't get me started on all the fundraising catalogues and PTA sign-ups that come home or arrive in my email inbox and I'm supposed to do something with them.  It's exhausting just trying to keep track.

So, vive le weekend!