Near the end of the day of the Harvest Faire, Ian was working in the candle dipping room and Lucas was making a candle. Asher and I got to wander a bit through the school farm.

We visited the sheep, llama, chickens, cow, and pony. We watched the American River tumble by where the sheep were grazing.

It was pretty rainy at this point, but the farm didn’t mind so neither did we. We looked at the beautiful crops and flowers growing, and the artwork that graces the fields.

We also wandered back through the school, where the Faire was winding up. Here is the fruit of the paper marbling booth, hanging out to dry. Lucas and Daddy got to do this as their last activity of the day. Aren’t they beautiful? We have to pick Lucas’s paper up at the school office since it was too wet to take home that day.

Here is a pot that the potter threw during a demonstration earlier in the day. There was a huge crowd of children and parents watching him work.

Some more scenes  from our day: the xylophone and candle used during the puppet show; morning glories growing on the farm; and one shot from the horse vaulting demonstration.

This is the mermaid candle decoration I mentioned in my last post. This little girl was very patient to make such a tiny, intricate design.

This boy is making walnut-shell sailboats.

Lucas’s teacher, Ms. D, made this Welcome chalk drawing.

I wish I had photos of Lucas and X shooting bows, but alas I was elsewhere while they were doing that. All in all, it was a perfect day, lacking only blue skies. When we got home we were all exhausted and fulfilled.

We had a marvelous day Saturday at the Sacramento Waldorf School’s Harvest Faire. I was delighted to be asked to shoot photos at the festival. So many amazing and talented people worked tirelessly to pull off this community event and fundraiser. Their dedication and attention to detail is visible in every scene I shot.

Welcome to the Sacramento Waldorf School Harvest Faire!

This is Asher’s dear friend S, who goes to preschool with him. They had such fun in the Kindergarten yard, running and playing follow the leader. We saw two other dear preschool friends there, too. Asher was over the moon!

Asher got to see the puppet play of George and the Dragon, performed in the Kindergarten. It was delightful.

I was so honored to be allowed to take pictures during the puppet show performance. These dedicated women (plus the narrator who is not pictured) are the Kindergarten teachers. They infuse love and light in everything they do.

The Children’s Store was full of inexpensive treasures for the little ones to buy, either for themselves or for their loved ones. Many of the items were handmade.

The Country Store was also full of lovely items, much of them handcrafted. Jams, honey, hats, decorations, toys, games, clothing, artworks, yarns and supplies—you name it. Here’s my Harvest Mother in the foreground, who sold early and for a good price, and the room’s nature table in the background.

The third grade parents offered beeswax candle dipping to Harvest Faire guests. (I got to help with setup on Friday, and Ian did two shifts on Saturday.) Candle dippers walked in a large circle, dipping their candlewicks in warm beeswax and then walking a few paces to let it cool, dipping in cool water, walking a few paces and then repeating. After a while, you have a nice candle that you can decorate. I saw one little girl pressing tiny seed beads into her fresh candle, to make a little mermaid design.

Paints for gourd painting: I’m kind of sorry I didn’t get more shots of this booth, as I’m sure some colorful gourds were made.

There was a whole room dedicated to showing off Waldorf students’ schoolwork. Every grade was represented, including high school subjects like chemistry and humanities.

The vendors were terrific this year and I’m sorry I didn’t have the funds for serious shopping. These carved Halloween gourds are the work of a friend, Miss Katy. They’re boo-tiful.

One booth was decorating a fairy scene. Children could make a little fairy doll and then glue special trinkets like shells, jewels, and tiny pumpkins onto the scene.

Basket of fairy wreaths. You could make your own!

Asher had a wonderful time! He was my little Acorn Boy that day, sporting grandma’s knits.

The ninth grade sold produce from the school farm and other local organic farms—a kind of mini farmers’ market in the Faire.

This is the Festivals Room, which was a display of all the seasons of the year and the various festivals celebrated in Waldorf schools and homes. Some loving volunteers put this together and it was magical.

Autumn scene from the Festivals Room.

Lucas and X got to play tag and be rowdy for a while. These two get along so beautifully. Later, they got to shoot a bow!

There was so much more. I might just indulge in another post.

I made a few other goodies for the Waldorf school’s Harvest Faire this Saturday. The mice and gnomes are intended for the Children’s Store, which is a shop full of small treasures and handmade lovlies intended to fit a child’s budget. Only children younger than about 10 are allowed to shop there and I believe the highest price they would pay is $2. I’m told my needle-felted mice have been a big hit in years past.

I left the knitted cat in the basket for the Country Store, which is open to shopping adults and sells crafts and handmade items of all types. I hear my friends’ honey will be sold there this year and I’m hoping to snag some.

This is my best work to date. I made this needle-felted Harvest Mother as a donation for our school’s Country Store fundraiser, part of Sacramento Waldorf School’s Harvest Faire, which is being held this Saturday, October 23. Now that’s she’s done, I’m kind of sorry to have to give her up. She took about four hours to make, spread over several evenings. She is about 9 inches tall and the widest part of her skirt is about 7 inches across.

I tried to gently stripe the colors to suggest agricultural rows. I tried to suggest that from her body flows all good things: crops of pumpkins, cabbages, and greens. I tried to use colors that bring to mind dried-up summer grains and tired fields ready for resting. I tried to suggest that she is the goddess of foods gathered in and the growing foods that will nourish us in time, in a never-ending cycle. I hope you can see the wind in her hair.

I admit, that’s a lot to suggest with a bunch of fluff!

It’s amazing what a little needle can do! She is holding a cornucopia in her arms, can you tell?

These are two details of her earthy skirt, with various crops growing on it. I love the pumpkin vines the most. I would have loved to make grapes and wheat, but I couldn’t seem to make the wool cooperate in that way for superfine details.

I’m ridiculously proud of this doll! I don’t really want to give her up, but she is going for a good cause. I just hope they sell her for a decent amount and that the person who buys her loves her as much as I do.

Farm equipment at Capay Organics

Backyard zenias and verbena in the late afternoon sun

Pumpkin patch at Capay Organics

Sun decorating Grandma and Papa’s garden fence

Mossy rock at my parents’ home

Fallen leaf art

Michaelmas evening sky

Tulip tree turning

Grandma’s old-fashioned roses

This past Saturday I got to attend two wonderful handwork classes taught by fiber artist/teacher extraordinaire and homeschooling consultant Jennifer Tan of Syrendell. The classes were free and offered by the Friends of the Fair Oaks Library. (Thank you, Friends! Thank you, Jennifer!) The morning class was beginning crochet and the afternoon class was spinning. I had the pleasure of taking a spinning class from Jennifer earlier this year, too. Oh my, this stuff is challenging and fun! It’s supposed to become relaxing and even therapeutic once you get comfortable and good at it.

Jennifer’s display of handspun yarns, crochet hooks of many sizes, a fiber batt, niddy-noddies, and drop spindles. I think the tools are gorgeous.

My classmate R’s lovely crochet

The left photo is yarn spun by a 9-year-old girl; Jennifer Tan is in the middle; the right is yarn spun by our lovely Youth Librarian, Stephanie. It is thanks to her and the Friends of the Library that this class was offered.

My crochet! My hands made this!

Basket of colorful roving and some handspun yarns made by Jennifer and her family, all of whom are tremendous fiber artists

Drop spindles

My yarn. We started with a lovely brown wool and moved on to some colors; mine has brown, red, navy, and a dark orange.

I crocheted this wee pumpkin, which is small enough to fit in my tightly cupped hand! I finished it at home and improvised a stem of sorts. My boys think I should sew a jack-o’-lantern face on it.

And this is my attempt to apply what I learned at home without my patient teacher to correct me. I seem to have remembered how to start a circle and how to increase enough to keep it flat. This is a crummy acrylic yarn leftover from our Solstice sun project. It might become a Halloween decoration. I also practiced more on that green square—alas, it is definitely a triangle now.

The Fair Oaks Library is hosting two more handwork classes taught by Jennifer next Saturday, October 23. They are beginning crochet and Tunisian crochet, and both are free. Registration is required though. I would happily take those as well, but for the conflict with our school’s Harvest Faire.

My baby left this morning wearing Ian’s 20-year-old backpack covered in European country patches. It was stuffed with his gear and bigger than him.

“I feel like the tortoise who won the race. No wonder he went slowly!” Lucas said, staggering under its weight.

He’s off with his third-grade class for a first-ever overnight camping trip. They are going to Full Belly Farm, an organic farm in Capay (which must be really close to the farm we went to last weekend). The whole class will be sleeping in tents. It’s going to be awesome.

I am so proud of Lucas. Today, I truly feel that the time does fly by. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that I was holding his hand as we marched for the first time into the Kindergarten?

The anticipation of this class trip was hard on him. Lucas was pretty nervous and asked me more than once, “Do I have to go?” He cried and worried. It’s so hard to find the right balance between being compassionate about his emotional turmoil and being encouraging yet firm. No, I’m not going to let him skip this amazing class trip because he’s afraid of it. He is ready, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Does that make me mean? That’s mothering for you—I’m part Mom, part Sensei.

I just kept telling him how much fun he was going to have, how busy he and his classmates would be, and how it’s OK to feel nervous about things. “You’ll be fine! Lots of people will be there to take care of you,” I told him. I also know that Lucas is a wonderful caregiver, and so we role-played how he would act if he found one of his classmates was having a hard time and feeling sad and homesick. He came up with wonderful strategies for making that friend feel better. I think that made him feel empowered and competent.

I made sure Lucas has both phone numbers so he can call home if he needs to. The teachers said that would be fine. We packed a little lavender-scented pillow I made him for Valentine’s Day; something he can sleep with if he’s feeling homesick.

The worry he has been feeling the last couple of days seemed this morning to have been outstripped by his excitement. He happily trudged out the door—no tears, no bargaining, no hesitation. Just an 8 1/2-year-old boy with places to go and friends to meet.

Courage is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway. This trip seems to me to have just the right degree of challenge, the right ratio of fear to reward. And of course, it has everything to do with their third-grade curriculum, studying gardening and grains.

(These are partial-page scans from his Gardening and Grains lesson book. My scanner isn’t big enough to capture the whole page.)

I love this Waldorf curriculum. I love that my son gets to spend a day and a night on a working farm that is using sustainable practices and raising sheep for wool. I love that he knows where his food comes from. I love that part of school for him is fresh air and sunshine, digging in the mud and planting seeds, and swimming in a pond. I love that his physical and spiritual development are carefully considered in addition to his academic aptitude and achievement; that the health and unity of the class as a whole is considered. I love that he is challenged with tasks that are a trifle scary and difficult, and supported while he faces his fears and overcomes obstacles. I feel he is being nourished every day by these qualities and so many more that I can’t even put into words.

I’m just so full of gratitude, and hoping he has a wonderful time.

This beautiful book is by one of the most prolific and popular children’s writers of all time, Jane Yolen. Child of Faerie, Child of Earth is a sweet poem in which a magical boy meets a human girl, and together they visit each other’s very different worlds.

“He was a child of faerie folk.
A child of sky and air,
And she was a child of humankind,
Of earth and toil and care.
They met in the dusk of Hallow’s Eve,
When widows grieve
In widow’s weave.
They met in the dark of Hallow’s Eve,
She had flowers in her hair.”

The girl spends an enchanted night dancing among the faeries. The boy asks her to stay and be his elven queen; “Become a child of night, we’ll dance between the hollow hills bedecked in candlelight.”

But she knows better; it’s not her place. In turn, she leads him into her daytime world, and shows him the colors and textures of human life.

“He drank cold milk and ate brown bread.
He made a bed.
He cleaned a shed.
He followed everywhere she led,
Then round about again.”

“Oh stay with me dear faerie child,
And live here on the land.
We’ll till the soil, we’ll plow the field,
We’ll harvest hand in hand.”

He considers her offer under the cold, cold stars, but realizes this will never do. “You work. I play. I must away. I’ll keep the night and you the day.”

And so they part, but not without an exchange of gifts; she gives a fresh hen’s egg and with his magic, he extracts a feather from within it (“I give you this that comes from that”)—tokens for each to keep and to guide each back to the other. They are forever friends.

This book is so charming and full of magic. It’s perfect for little ones who believe in faerie folk and the magic of Halloween, but aren’t ready for the scary stuff.

“Be bold, be brave, be unafraid, and join that faerie ring.”

Jane Dyer is the illustrator of something like fifty children’s books, including Time for Bed by Mem Fox and When Mama Comes Home Tonight by Eileen Spinelli, two other favorites for small children.

We took a little nature walk last Sunday, after we were reunited. The boys had spend the night before at Grandma’s and Papa’s house and it seemed like a little quality time outdoors would be just the right thing.

Moments like these fill up my heart. In the future, when we’re having disagreements or struggles, I hope that such photos will remind us how much love we have always shared.

We were lucky to come across this handsome young buck.

My eyes were peeled for signs of autumn, which I found in yellowing oak leaves and blue-gray October skies. This was an industrious woodpecker!

Most things are dry and gone to seed; this yellow flower is being watered at the Nature Center.

Love this turkey hen’s bright red wattle.

Yellow leaves, yellow grasses, yellow flowers, and a yellow fungus.

This little doe crossed the path behind us. We got a great look at her as she leaped away.

Other hikers had told us of a big rattlesnake on the trail and three of us tried hard to find it. Asher thought that was a terrible idea. We never saw the snake, but found this great discarded snake skin.

So many beautiful sights to see! More on my Flickr.

Even though we were hungry when we finished, I think our walk was a huge success.

I promise this is my last post about Michaelmas. Maybe I got carried away a bit, but I already mentioned that this festival kind of spoke to me a lot this year.

We had a special dinner on Friday night after the school’s Michaelmas festival. (We have lots of special dinners, but usually Ian cooks them. This one was a joint effort.) As far as I’m concerned, any dinner featuring homemade bread and a first course is special. Anyway, my parents joined us and it was kind of both Michaelmas and a celebration of Ian’s birthday.

I couldn’t get Asher to join in this activity, but Lucas, Daddy and I all enjoyed shaping dragon breads. The bread recipe I used ended up being so wet and sticky I had to keep adding more and more cups of flour. It turned out yummy, but we ended up with far more bread dough than we needed!

We shaped three handsome dragon loaves and were able to send an unbaked loaf home with Grandma and Papa. Here are our dragons before they were baked. They are embellished with almond slices, dried cranberries, and dried mango, which we snipped into pointy plates and scales.

Our Michaelmas table set for dinner outside in the warm autumn evening. That’s Lucas’s sword he made for Michaelmas last year in second grade.

Lucas picked my dragon bread to eat first. He was dumbstruck when I handed him the good bread knife and asked if he would do us the honor of slaying the dragon for us. He did a great job slicing the bread for everyone.

I didn’t take a picture of my red lentil soup, but here’s the main course: dragon (grilled chicken thighs, sauteed spinach scales, sour cream, almond slices for toes, and a carved red bell pepper head.) I have to admit, carving and arranging this was super fun. Seeing the kids’ faces when I brought this out was the best! Thanks for grilling the chicken, Ian!

Okay. That’s it. Now I can start thinking about Halloween.