Lake Country Land School Blog: December 2017

8 December 2017

By Maggie

Friday was a hectic day. We woke up and had a community meeting, in which we talk about how we can improve the Farmstay. Then we did farm chores, our micro-economy projects, and worked on gifts for our secret Santas, which we’ll be presenting next week starting on Monday. This Farmstay seems to be very into knitting, and by Friday, almost everybody had learned how to knit and is working on blankets and scarves. That night, we had a make-your-own pizza dinner using the outdoor pizza oven and for a movie night, we watched Zoolander. After about 20-30 more minutes of messing around, we got ourselves organized and played Tiger, a game where the Homestead is pitch black and you can only tell where the tiger is by the sound of other people’s screams. We went to bed late and woke up today late. We’re all ready for the weekend.

10 December 2017

By Braeden

Today has been my favorite day so far. It is the first day that I don’t have to get up at 7:00 to do animal chores. I got to sleep in until 9:00. When I woke up, I took a nice long warm shower. After the shower, I relaxed and played ping-pong. At about 10:00 or 10:30, I went to set up for brunch.

I cooked sausages and set the tables for the meal. There were pancakes, sausages, bacon, eggs, and chocolate pancakes to eat. The food was delicious. I ate 3 sausages, ½ piece of bacon, and two chocolate chip pancakes. This meal was much better than the ordinary cereal breakfast. I then helped clean everything up, while listening to the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. Once the meal was cleaned up, I went outside and played with the soccer ball.

After our free time, we had P.E. which stands for physical expression. For P.E. we went sledding down strawberry hill. It was very fast to go down strawberry hill, but it was incredibly fun. When the time came, we walked back to the homestead for some more free time.

For free time I worked on my science project and did math. Before I knew it, I had to do my daily job. My daily job is to clean and organize the gathering room. I then had some more free time to play ping-pong. I then realized that nobody is playing ping-pong, so I decided to write this blog now. I am going to have chicken for dinner and then go to bed.

Tuesday December 12th, day 9

by Elizabeth

Today marks the halfway-point of our Farmstay. It’s also the day the rest of the Junior High comes to the Land School for Stewardship. All of us Farmstayers were not super excited to see our other classmates. They’ll mess up our flow and break-up our closeness! We even considered standing in the road and blocking the bus in protest. Well, of course we never did, and as soon as they came running towards us, we remembered why we bothered emailing them. These are our friends!

After a good ten minutes of hugging, “I missed yous," other forms of excited greeting, and many brief summaries of all the hilarious things that have happened so far, we gathered around the fire circle for a short meeting after which we immediately broke into our Stewardship groups.

My Stewardship group is usually orchard, but since Katie was sick I got to work on trails. It was pretty fun. We got to saw up a big ironwood tree that had fallen on the path.

Then we had lunch! I had leftover pesto pasta with garlic butter. It was very yummy. AND we got hot cocoa. Yay! After that we had free time. A lot of us played Get Down Mr. President, which is a very fun game in the snow. Then the Junior High left.

With no time to mourn the temporary loss of our urban friends, we rushed right into our micro economy work. There’s only four more days until the Holiday Fair!

Thursday 14 Dec 2017

by Molly

Today was crazy and exciting, but it did not start off that way. We ate a calm breakfast some of us still waking up. We gathered for morning meeting and discussed something that Wendell Berry had once said "Eating is an agricultural act.” Some of us disagreed, but most of us agreed

We broke off into our Occupation groups. I am in Prepared Environment and while I worked on building a picture frames for the dorms, the Food Around the World group prepared lunch. We had leftovers; they were better the second time. As lunch was being cleaned up we had quietude: quiet and solitude.

Next we worked on our micro economy projects. Everyone is working really hard and everyone is excited for the Holiday Fair on Saturday. People chopped wood, made stress balls, candles and baked. We also got the opportunity to check in with Sara about our English work.

After lots of hard work on micro economy projects we gathered and learned that we would be going on a observation hunt for physical expression. We divided into our mentor groups and grabbed our cameras, got on our snow gear and headed out.

We came back in time for dinner which was planned by Mia and Tessa. I was a Mexican and Haitian meal. There was agua fraska, plantains, hatichan rice, pikliz and more. For dessert we had chiro boats. The entire meal was amazing, thank you Mia and Tessa.

We jumped right into study hall and from there into our evening meeting. Katie read us a book called Everyone Needs a Rock by Byrd Bayly. We went into our rooms and settled down for the night.

15 Dec 2017

By Alden

Today was indeed a fun Friday. After we had made breakfast; done animal chores; and then eaten breakfast, we had a community meeting and discussed our day and what the weekend was going to be like. We also chose a movie for movie night Friday.

Then, for the beginning of a great day, we gave the last gifts for our Farm Stay Secret Santa. Everybody was very pleased with the gifts they received, including me. I got cookies, fruit snacks, hot chocolate and many more delicious items.

After the gift giving we did some community work for the Land School. I chose to be in lunch crew and we made cornbread and chili. I made the cornbread and at first was not very happy with my results, but people surprisingly liked it. Other groups set up for the Holiday Fair by setting out tablecloths and sweeping.

After lunch we had a four hour time to work on our Micro-Eco projects and many of us including me needed this very much. Without it, none of our projects would be too much of a success.

After this, we did a deep clean and did all of our daily jobs in a deeper and more thorough way, cleaning every nook and cranny of the Homestead. Then we had a delicious leftover dinner and went into watching a movie. We watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off and everybody absolutely loved it. We were all tired and wanting to go to bed. So we went to bed and everybody was asleep or pretending to be asleep by 10:00.

20 Dec 2017
by Terra

We woke up to do our farm chores in the morning, and we had very mixed feelings about how this was our second to last day of Farmstay. After our breakfast and cleanup, we had a Math morning, full of tests and practices. We had a new thing that we had to watch a video on, and everyone struggled. After Math we had morning meeting. We did headlines like "starving polar bear video goes viral," and we did morning pages. After that we had Occupations. I am in Prepared Environment. While Andy was cutting wood for a box, we worked hard on our labyrinth. A labyrinth is not a maze. It always leads out. We laid down straw on the trails and worked hard. We were all really hungry when they called us in out of the cold for lunch.

The other Occupations group is Food Around the World. They make all our lunches. We had falafel for lunch along with pita. I was on lunch clean up while people had Quietude. Quietude is very peaceful and relaxing, a great way to get away from people you have been with for almost three weeks. When Quietude was over, we had Creative Expression(C.E.). The day before, we had made cookies, and now we got to decorate them! People who weren’t decorating were knitting or zentangling. When P.E. rolled around some people went outside and some stayed inside for more C.E.. After a dinner of tacos we had our solstice celebration. We got chocolate coins and read poems about darkness or light. When the celebration was over, we brushed our teeth and went to bed, ready to go home.