This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was insects. Now this is a subject my kids never tire of and we have many, many buggie pal photos, including a lot of fuzzy caterpillars recently. I don’t know if any garden fairies have been living in our fairy house, but I do know that a lot of caterpillars have called it home, at least temporarily. Rather than just combing the backyard for a critter, I wanted to do something specific for this week’s theme.

With the all the painting going on around here (the exterior, the deck and a couple rooms inside) it seemed like a field trip was a better idea then a craft or science project. So we went off in search of bees. And where is the best place to find bees? The cider mill of course! All the locals here know that you don’t get really good cider until after the first frost but fresh, hot donuts more than make up for a little premature cider ;). We took some time and looked at the bee houses (carefully – there were lots and lots of busy bees), although the best view we got was the bee who decided to spend our entire snack time perched on top of our gallon of cider.

We of course also visited the petting farm, hay maze and other kiddie activities. We didn’t do any apple picking yet but did pick up some peaches for jamming. My mom and I made several batches of Spiced Peach Jam on Sunday.