One of the great things about having moved to the new farm is the wonderful seasonal surprises it offers. In early spring I found myself spellbound by the beauty and quantity of wild dogwoods out here. And, now, as fall is upon us, we are enjoying the surprise persimmons.

Before the endless rain began, we harvested a bunch from a tree in the girls' goat field.

The ladies stayed close by, just in case we happened to drop any. As you can see they'd already stripped the tree bare as high as they could reach. Girl 2 was at a friend's house, so she missed out on this activity. But, Girl 1 gathered a bunch from atop her stepladder while Boy preferred to climb the tree in search of ripe fruit.

Of course, the goats were thankful for the little boost our ladder afforded them, too. If you were wondering, yes, this was pretty dangerous. Nutmeg nearly knocked the ladder over while I was on it.

I prepared the persimmon pulp one afternoon. Talk about messy work!

And, then Boy helped me make the jam one evening while the rain poured outside. Watching me stir the jam, he offered to help: "Mom, it just looks like you're holding the spoon and wiggling your arm around. I can do that. I'm good at wiggling!"

He was a great helper. Though he did get pretty distracted by the cool magnetic tool I use to lift the jar lids from the boiling water. He became obsessed with identifying everything in the house that it would "stick to."

And, since he's learned all his letters at school, he's obsessed with having me spell things. While we were waiting on our jars to process, he kept asking me to spell things as he doodled away on this used post-it note. When he finished, I asked him to read it to me. He put his hands on his hips and proclaimed, "It says '(insert his full name here) Brood Farm Man!' That's me!" Of course the post-it also has a few other random letters and sight words they're learning at school, for good measure, I guess. ;)

So, our surprise persimmons are now jam. There are some more on the tree that weren't ripe yet. We're hoping to try a new recipe for persimmon bread with those when the time comes.