Conversation with a school child.

Last year one of my children had a conversation with Clara who lives in our neighbourhood.
Clara and her brother Mike were trampling mushrooms to pieces, which my children didn't like, so my oldest went up to them and asked them to stop wrecking nature for no good reason.
The Clara stated that it was important to trample mushrooms because mushrooms are a hazard to nature.
My child replies: "Mushrooms are nature you dope, the crisp bag and plastic bottle you just threw down are a hazard to nature." and left it at that.

Chicken :-)

A few days ago I was going to make a chicken broth. I prefer using chickens with the feet on for that as that gives more nutrients in the broth. So I got myself one and asked my partner to please cut it up a bit, so I could put it in the pan, otherwise the chicken was going to be too big to put in, and we do not need to see the feet sticking out all the time *g*.
Then he invited the kids to have a look at the chicken and a feel. So they came and were interested. The chicken got fairly well dissected on its way to the pan, some stuff was given to the dog, other pieces ended up going to really little pieces to see what was muscle tissue, what was fat tissue, what is bones, where are bones, why is the chest bone so different than a human chest bone. The works. It was really interesting and even our 5yo was totally fascinated by the chicken.

Education in the woods

Yesterday a friend of mine came over. She is very knowledgeable about plants that you can eat and stuff. She actually teaches it. We went into the woods near our house to have a walk there and see what there is to eat out there, there was quite a bit that you can eat or work with.
Clover flowers - in your salad
Stinging nettle - new tips of leaves in your salad, tea from the older leaves, use the older leaves as spinach, use the branches to make rope of.
Black berry - eat the fruit, eat the young leave tips, make tea out of the older leaves.
Duizendblad - eat the leaves in your salad, use them on wounds.
Dandelion leaves - in your salad
Bilberry's - eat the berries
Goat's willow - make things with the branches
Prickly coconut smelling bushes - flowers you can make wine of and put in your salad, they taste like coconut, but they have to be prickly.
Pine - the bark was used to extend rye & spelt flour by the vikings, like they do with soya now. I think I prefer the pine bark.
Birch - the sap can be used to make a nice wine of - tap the tree for 2 weeks in the end of march, no longer, coz that can damage the tree. Use the sap to make wine with. The pink colour of the bark has also been used as dye.

She also talked about quite some stuff that wasn't supposed to be in our woods, as they aren't native and are wrecking the soil or something like that.
Rhodondendron - comes from Asia and wrecks the soil
Hypericum - comes from Japan.

We talked about the grey squirrel, as that is a native to the US and outnumbering the UK native brown squirrel.
Furthermore we talked about rabbits, came with the vikings for food.
And hares, came with the Romans for food.
Neither of them native here basically. In the meantime they sort of are though.
The vikings used to use rabbits like we do chickens now, which are actually also not native, they come from Asia.

The kids enjoyed the talking very much, it was quite hands on, we tasted various things and found most of it tasting quite alright. The berries were all very good!