Field Trip

I thought I'd share our first field trip of this school year with you. Our city had an open house at the Water Treatment Plant and the Waste Water Treatment Facility. At the last minute I thought to call two friends (and homeschool moms) to see if they wanted to go with me. Here we are with our crew of eager learners. The Water Treatment Plant was a very quick tour...and the man giving the tours wouldn't take us back to the mechanical areas "because of all the children". But he did direct us to the room with coffee, cookies and lemonade. Umm...Thank You?

On the other hand, the man giving tours at the Waste Water Treatment Facility was wonderful. He took us on a tour of the entire place, taking a lot of time to answer questions.

The first stop was to show the children the lab. They were able to look at good bacteria under a microscope. The water on the counter is samples of influent water, effluent water, MBR effluent (which I can't remember the definition of) and water from our local Crow River.

Here is some influent water. (Our tour guide said it's the right consistency if it looks like thick chocolate milk. I'll never enjoy a glass of chocolate milk again.) This is water after all the solids and other foreign objects have been removed from the liquid waste. You know, anything that drains from the sinks or flushed down the toilet. For example, if we lived in town, that stuff would include little boys' underwear, matchbox cars, nails, screws, a pink watch, the occasional washcloth or hand towel, a cloth diaper or two, little girls' underwear, but not our many dead goldfish. Those would go on to the solids processing area.
This is the overflow area. If we experienced a huge rain storm or flood which overloaded the sewer system, the influent water would be held in this pond. I'm sure glad they had this sign up, otherwise someone like me who loves chocolate milk, might want to jump the eight foot fence and drink a gallon or two. Here is Duchess looking at the influent water splashing around under her feet. Want to know something disgusting? Some of that that chocolate milk looking stuff splashed up onto my bare foot. Note to self: Never wear sandals when touring a Waste Water Treatment Facility.
After the influent water has been churned and filtered, it becomes effluent water and will be drained into the river, but not before going under UV lights to sterilize the bad bacteria. Then those little buggers can't reproduce in the river and wreak havoc. They used to kill the bad bacteria with chlorine and another product that I can't recall. We were told this is much safer and better for the environment. Here is effluent water before being released into the river.
Here is our tour guide showing how he samples the effluent water. If you ever want an excellent tour guide, you must ask for this guy!
Those big domes in the background are where the solids (minus all the matchbox cars and other foreign objects) are pumped and stored during the breakdown process.

Then the solids are brought into the drying room and dehydrated. I know what you are all wanting to ask, "So, what do they do with those dehydrated solids?"Use it for fertilizer, of course. Here the boys looking at jars of dehydrated solids and photos of where they are spread. Right now they are used to fertilize area fields and our local golf course. And just so you know, solids are not only *poo*, but food items too...like the stuff that people wash down the drain after doing dishes and through their garbage disposals. Aren't you glad I pointed that out to you? Now those jars of dehydrated solids don't seem so disgusting do they?

Busy, Busy

If you've been wondering where we've been, maybe this photo will give you an idea. We have an over abundant crop of tomatoes this year. Here is a photo of our first picking.
Actually it is The King and Duchess' first picking. She is our garden fairy...loving each and every aspect of the garden. When The King planted tomatoes, she was right by his side handing him the plants and helping press them into the ground. When he was weeding, she was right there with him, never complaining, not even when she would get pricked by a thistle. When he was harvesting, she was hauling buckets and buckets of tomatoes to add to the pile. She absolutely loves to garden!
Then she stayed by his side as they prepared the tomatoes for canning.
The day they picked, the tomatoes were wet and muddy. Duchess took it upon herself to wash the tomatoes before The King began the blanching process. As you can see, she was the ONLY child of ours who considered helping with this part. Then Jouster stepped in by coring and peeling gallons and gallons of blanched and cooled tomatoes.I didn't com into play until after Jouster finished coring and peeling. I decided what the final product would become and bossed people around. I'm good at that--bossing people around--I think it is a firstborn thing. Here is a look at some of our efforts. Above are whole tomatoes, tomato juice and tomato soup base. We learned a lesson this year. If the tomato product has not been cooked before processing, the water from the tomatoes will separate (the tomatoes on the right side of the photo show separation). If you don't mind how it looks it saves a step in the whole process.
Here is some of our salsa. There are a few jars of pickles hiding in the back. I think we have about 160 quarts of canned "stuff" so far.

Yep, we are still here. We've just been a little busy.

A Visitor From the Woods

Friday evening The King and I went on a double date with King's Twin and Sister In Love. We decided to end the evening at our house for a cup of coffee. As we were pulling up to our driveway we saw some people walking in our ditch. We could tell they were trying to figure out how to get into our fenced woods. Apparently the woman had been called in by the sheriff's office regarding an injured owl. (Someone driving along the road noticed the owl flopping around near the ditch.) When they tried to get close to the owl, he was able to jump our fence and was hiding out in the woods.

The Bird Lady works with the Raptor Center, rescuing injured birds. She took the time to explain to the kids that this was a juvenile male Barred Owl. He had a broken wing and she figured he had been down about five days. The Bird Lady allowed all of the children to touch the feathers. She told us how she would give him IV fluids and how she planned to care for him. She also explained to us that if we were very lucky, we may even hear this owl's mate calling for him. She sang us the mating call. I wish I would have thought to video tape her doing that. Here is a site that has many different owl sounds, including the barred owl, in case you would like to hear a barred owl.

Isn't he beautiful? The King and I had heard a different bird sound this year, and commented on it numerous times. We were never able to identify it, until we listened to The Bird Lady. Unfortunately, she did not think that "our owl" would ever be able to be released into the wild again.

So, that was our big science lesson for the week. Did I forget to mention that we started school last Tuesday? Our science curriculum has not arrived, and Mr. Science a.k.a. Scribe, has been begging me to do science or at least some experiments. God must have been listening to the poor boy. Out of the blue...a science lesson straight from God...in our own yard. It doesn't get any better than that!