Yasaibatake's Blog

Field Trip!
Oct 20, 2007 | 1:58 PM PST
Tags: Louisberg cider mill , pumpkins , apples , Bachelor's Buttons

Uh, I typed out this whole thing and then forgot to copy it before posting. Of course, I was logged out :( Okay, how about a list summary...because I'm too lazy to type all that out again.

-Friday was a field trip day for our LIFT class! We went to the Louisberg cider mill/pumpkin path (in Louisberg, KS, just a touch south of us).
-We went through a corn maze, saw farm animals including the most adorable black piglets I've ever seen in my life, and generally tortured the LIFT teacher, who is a city slicker to the extreme and was totally lost/grossed out being in the country.
-The pumpkin patch was a huge disappointment. It was pretty much just a spot where a bunch of people litterally threw their extra pumpkins; at least 85% of the pumpkins were smashed open and rotting. But since we only have 6 students, we managed to find enough good pumpkins that everyone got one. The speech path ran around putting the good ones in clear spots so that the kiddos could "find" their own. It was so bad, the OT gave me a few (read: 4) pumpkin seeds one of the kids had picked from an open pumpkin, saying, "You should grow these so we'll have some good pumpkins next year."
-The cider mill was nifty and smelled great! One of the other paras asked me if you could grow apple trees from the seeds inside apples from the grocery store, and I had to admit I didn't know for sure, never having tried it, but that it made sense. I know there are some things where the grocery store foods can't produce viable seeds or something to that effect, but I couldn't tell you what produce that was or even where I heard that. So I guess I can't really say I know that, eh? Details.

-One of the Button seedlings toppled. About halfway up the stem, it looked like it suddenly got smashed - paper thin and more white than green. Mi padre suggested cutting off that part and leaving the bottom of the stem, which is still healthy, and waiting to see if it will come back, so I did. (Is it obvious yet that I have no idea what I'm doing? but that's half the fun) I planted three more seeds in the same pot to make up for the smashed one and the two that didn't sprout. When those sprout, I'll probably move all of them to a bigger pot, as the two survivors will be fairly big by then and I don't want to crowd them in too much. It is, after all, a pretty small pot.