Forestry Camp Yarn Along

Brian and Maddie gave me this book for Mother's Day when we got home from forestry camp. Its called This Book was a Tree and has lots of ideas and activities to do outside. One of the first projects is to make a junk journal out of an old clothbound book. The second project is making a pinhole camera. I suspect this book will keep both Maddie and me very busy!

While we wee at forestry camp I started working on some socks for myself using Stroll Handpainted fingering yarn from Knitpicks in the make believe colorway. I am using my favorite pattern from Ann Budd's book Getting Started Knitting Socks. It was fun to work on it at camp. A couple of the parents came to see what I was doing and so did some of the kids! One of the girls even told me she had received a set of dpns for Christmas but hadn't been brave enough to try them yet.

What are you knitting and reading?

Joining Ginny at Small Things for the Yarn Along.

Forestry Camp 2016

We were off Friday night to 4H Forestry Camp! Friday night is arrival and getting to know each other. On Saturday we learned tree identification, measuring a tree using a Biltmore stick, compass sighting and reading a topographic map. Maddie soaked up as much as she could and so did Brian while I took notes, notes and more notes!

Out the front door of the main bulding

Tree Identification 

Note taking!  

 Figuring out their pace for the Biltmore stick

What is the circumference of that tree any way?

Helping Daddy out! 

How tall is that tree?

Can we all agree how tall that tree is??

Which compass are we using for this map any way?

Sighting with the compass

On Sunday morning they took a test for each area. Maddie was thrilled to learn that she was one of the top 4 in her age group of kids 13 and under. Soon she will be in the 14 and up group and could head off to National Forestry Camp if she manages to stay in the top 4.

Getting the certificate of participation

Top 4! Look at that big grin. She was really surprised. We went in with the goal of doing better than last year. She blew that goal right out of the water!

It was a lot of fun but now its back to business as usual....with some tree identification and measuring thrown in!

Migration Celebration!

We were hoping for a nice sunny beautiful day with lots of kids to talk to about 4H. What we got was rain, cold and miserable weather and few kids popping by. Oh well, we still had a lot of fun!! We set up our table for our 4H club about 10:30 this morning.

Then we noticed the wildlife rehabilitators were in the barn with us. How did we notice? Turkey Vulture!! Maddie was wishing she had brought her good camera despite the weather forecast! 

We continued to wait for kids, well, anyone really! Finally a few people stopped by to try out our experiment. We had a variety of bird foods (or representative foods) and different types of tools that could be used as a beak. The idea was to figure out which one worked best by looking at a picture of the bird. Most kids got the idea pretty quickly and easily chose the right things. 

When things began to get slow again the kids went to check things out around us, they made a suet feeder and found a spot with turtles to look at. Even the adults at the surrounding tables meandered about a bit. We had the Audubon Society and Arbor Day.org in the barn along with the wildlife rehabilitator. 

The big event of the day was the release of a red tailed hawk into the wild. He fly without hesitation out of the box and across the river to the island. It was really something to see! We got one shot and Maddie managed a video which you can see here.

Now we are snuggled up and tucked in reading, computing and generally trying to get warmed up! 

Ranger Maddie

Today was a red letter day for Maddie! Brian took the day off from work so they could go to Saratoga Spa State Park and help with fish stocking. In the end there were so many people she only got to stock 1 fish! Both of them still had a great time though and have plans to go back next year. However they have to be there earlier Brian says! While that wouldn't have mattered as far as the amount of fish to stock it would've shortened the wait time considerably. 45 minutes to wait for 1 fish!

Heading out with lots of hot chocolate!

In the evening we went to help another 4H club with cloverbuds make nature journals. That was a lot of fun because they were very enthusiastic and the parents were all hands on helping and paying attention to their kids not their phones! 

When their journals were done Maddie passed out a color hunt from Mud Puddles to Meteors and took the kids on a nature walk around the nature trail in the park. I had told her we were going to do this but I don't think she fully realized what that meant until we all looked at her and said "Lead the way!". Her eyes lit up and off we went. 

Here she is teaching the kids an easy trick to identify a white pine.

Want to know the white pine trick? WHITE=5 letters if the bunch of needles has 5 in it then it is a white pine! Pretty neat, isn't it? 

That was a long, fun, and happy day for Maddie Grace! Today its back to the schoolwork.

Washington County Fiber Tour

Today Maddie and Brian agreed to go along on a couple of stops on the Washington County Fiber Tour. First we went to Alpacas of Haven Hill and met the alpacas. They have 19 on their farm along with horses and dogs. They also have a cute little shop where they sell items made from their alpaca's fleece.

Brothers! They just got done hitting each other about the neck and decided to look innocent. 

I could not resist this guy with his teeth. 

The girls! They liked to pose for the camera.

Our next stop was St.Mary's on the Hill Cashmere Goats. Not only did we meet the nuns but we also met another group of 4H kids. 

This made Maddie's day! 

Another one I couldn't resist! Snoozing upside down. Its hard work entertaining all those people when you are only a few weeks old.

This guy refused to look at us.

This one put up with Brian and I for a minute then went over to nuzzle and lick Maddie to get her attention. 

This little guy worked really hard and finally got into the feed box.

Our last stop was the Battenkill Carding and Spinning Mill. I didn't take any photos but the machines were really neat! We got to see the process of taking a fleece, cleaning it, carding it, spinning it and making it into yarn. It was a lot of fun. Even Maddie and Brian had fun and we might do more next year!