Honeycombs

Here's what a morning of homeschool sometimes looks like. Jake was alternating between his dreaded math homework and seeing how fast he could reassemble the anatomy toy his cousin Fred just gave him. (He wasn't interested in getting out his anatomy coloring book and reading up on what those various organs do-believe me, I tried.) Meanwhile, as part of my recent efforts to reduce the clutter in our house (a Sisyphean task if ever there was one), I decided to take on the huge box of honeycomb frames that have been sitting on our counter for quite some time.

I cut and packaged about 25 squares in greaseproof paper, and slapped on the labels I made a while back for Henry's jars of honey (more of which will be coming soon). Honeycombs are very handy to have around for last minute birthday or hostess gifts. I put the excess wax in a scrap bucket I keep for that purpose, and once I have enough to bother with, I'll boil and clean and separate it to use for lip balm and various other things. They're all so time consuming, these homestead-y projects we find ourselves doing from time to time. With each new similar endeavor I marvel more and more at the amount of time and effort my great grandparents' generation had to put into getting things done. For instance, to get yourself a new sweater back then you would have to: shear a sheep, wash the wool, card the wool, spin the wool knit the wool into a sweater vs. today: order a sweater online and wear it the next day. It's crazy-crazy, when I think about it. 

For a variety of reasons I may or may not someday explain, we've decided that Jake will start back at school again in the fall. I don't know how people who home educate their kids do anything else (like write blog posts, for instance), but some do. This is the last week of school for my other boys, so soon we'll all be home, harvesting honey, staying up late, and driving each other crazy. Believe it or not, I'm ready.