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Apples of Gold for Home Educators
WHAT IS APPLES OF GOLD?
Apples of Gold began as a homeschool newsletter reaching the communities of both Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota as well as outlying regions. However, Apples of Gold is now an online ezine, filled with encouraging articles and ideas for homeschoolers everywhere.
Apples of Gold is in its 14th year of publication. It contains articles to guide, encourage, and support homeschoolers as well as regular columns on Christian values in the homeschool, homeschooling and the outdoors, and subject tips and methods. Apples of Gold also has a place for homeschooled students to publish their work. Whether it's a story, poem, drawing, photo, cartoon, joke,or description of a project, homeschooled students can email or snail mail their work to Apples of Gold and see it in print as long as there is room and the piece is in good taste. Of course, regional readers will appreciate the lists of homeschooling events and activities that the editors include with each issue.
If you are thinking about homeschooling, or are currently homeschooling, or have family members who homeschool, stop by our website and check us out. Visit us at: www.applesofgoldnews.com . In the meantime, if you have questions about homeschooling, I'd love to hear from you. Email me at muschfarm@yahoo.com .
Here's a sample article from Apples of Gold from my column "Along a Country Path":
COWS IN THE HAYLOFT
I started my morning like any normal day... don’t laugh yet. I know what they say about words like "normal". Yeah, yeah, it’s true. Okay. I started my morning in the usual manner, which, now that summer is upon us, is a little bit slow. The sun had been up for a spell, and I felt like the day was already getting out of hand as far as accomplishing all I’d hoped to when I went to bed the night before.
It was somewhere between readying the bottles to feed the kid goats and readying breakfast to feed the grandkids that my son came through the door and greeted my morning with, "Mom, the bull is in the hayloft!"
You may wonder how such a thing is possible, and rightly so. Well, the barn is built into a hill, and the big wide doors on the hayloft come right out at ground level, so it really isn’t such a miracle. But it did beg the question, "How did he get on my side of the fence?"
I was prepared for the worst. Well, not really. Nothing can prepare you for that. I was picturing him stampeding through the loose hay and charging into the pigeon coop while birds flew everywhere and cats dashed hither and thither to escape his sharp hooves. My mental imagery ended with him crashing through the floor boards where they’re weak (or non-existent), then trying to figure out what to do with a broken bull! Thankfully, he’s pretty good-natured, and came back out the way he went in with a contented belly full of 5-grain scratch.
We couldn’t find a break in the fence, though, which is a little unsettling, making you wonder if he jumped over and where, and when he would do it again. Cows are pretty smart about those things. Once they learn something, they don’t shake it out of their memories very easily.
That night I arrived home from work at dark to a quiet house, except for the phone ringing as I walked through the door. It was my oldest daughter who lives out on "the back forty".
"Mom," her voice bled displeasure, "I just had to put the bull in by myself, and I didn’t like it very much! He was standing outside my door and I didn’t know what to do!"
I felt bad for her, because a big black bull can be very intimidating. My little nephew says he has "stormy eyes."
So we waited for Dad to get home, and he investigated and, well, he must have done something, because the bull has been staying on his side of the fence ever since.
That’s the way it is when the summer lush comes upon us here on the farm. At least this year the whole heard didn’t decide to stroll down to the neighbors’ and vandalize their garage. They just get a little restless. They can always smell the green grass on the next hill, and suddenly a pile of old hay loses it’s appeal.
It’s the same with children. Summer bursts upon them and their little bodies start humming with energy until they can’t take it anymore. That’s when we know that school’s done. We don’t even always get to set a date on the calendar. We just hear the call of all that green grass, those big shady trees whispering in the sunshine, the water sparkling out on some lake beckoning with its ripples like fingers wagging at us, and we’re lost. We answer the call. We jump the fence. We escape to our favorite "hayloft". And there’s no going back.