First,  a bit of “Old Business” – Yay!  I paid a visit to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and my “blocked plug-ins” are now unblocked.  I have added two YouTube links to the previous post (“Wordery”).

    

From our farm unit: we have finished the terrific “Farm Anatomy” book (authored by Julia Rothman). From the final pages, we learned about root cellars and the making of maple syrup.

• Root Cellars – I told my son about the root cellar at his great-grandparents’ Montana cabin. It was a chilly underground pantry with dirt floors and dirt walls that efficiently stored corn, green apples, and cabbage that my grandfather grew on his small farm. Then I reminded my son of the modified root cellar we had in our Idaho house (many years ago). This amounted to a narrow basement closet that had a dirt floor.  Whoopie.
• Maple Syrup – We read about the process of making maple syrup.  After we discussed the deliciousness of maple syrup, here is what we thought about: (1) what kind of person, way back when, decided to taste sap coming out of a tree and then (2)  envisioned that with a bit of doctoring up, the sap would be just the thing to enhance pancakes?  We want to know this type of person.

 

Our Farmer Brown story problem: who knew, that on top of everything else, Farmer Brown makes his own maple syrup?  We learned from “Farm Anatomy” that it takes nine gallons of sap to make one pint of syrup.  So, we looked at a gallon-sized container and a pint-sized container.  Question of the evening:  if Farmer Brown’s tapping buckets accumulate 450 gallons of sap, how many pints of maple syrup will he end up with?  If he saves 10 pints to give as gifts, and 10 pints for his own pancake consumption, how much money will he earn if he sells the remaining pints for $8.00 each?

 

Our “Le Fictitious Local Diner” story problem: On an average, the diner sells 300 pancake breakfasts each week (the photo above is, of course, the “teen-age boy in-your-dreams pancake plate”).  Each REGULAR order (3 pancakes) comes with a small pitcher containing ¼ pint of maple syrup.  How many pints of maple syrup does the diner go through each week?  If the purchase price for a pint is $5, how much will this cost the diner?  If syrup is purchased by the gallon ($25), how much will this cost the diner?

Our music theme last night:  DUETS!  (and the following 3 are so A+++!)

• “The Flower Duet” from Lakme (1882), by Leo Delibes. This utterly beautiful and soothing duet deservedly ends up on every single “famous opera duet” list (raise your hand if you knew there existed such lists).  This enchanting melody has been used as background music for British Airways commercials.

• “Si Fino All’ore Estreme” from the opera, “Norma” (1831) by Vincenzo Bellini.  The recorded version we enjoy, by Marilyn Horne and Joan Sutherland, is high-energy perfection.  (I couldn’t find a good Horne/Sutherland link, but the music in this video is superb.)

• Finally, who cannot LOVE, “People Will Say We’re In Love”, from “Oklahoma” (1943), by Rogers and Hammerstein?

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH