A Visit with the Kangs

   Linda and I are spending most of the week in Forest Grove, Oregon visiting the Kangs. Actually, we are mainly babysitting younger Kangs while their parents enjoy a little alone time at the beach for a few days and then serve as adult supervision at a young women's activity.  This particular visit has given me an opportunity to check on the progress of Autumn, my"sourdough pancake paduan", and Chloe, my "biscuit paduan".  I was very pleased to see that each of them was able to meet the test and respectively produce great sourdough pancakes and biscuits. I told Chloe now that she is a biscuit master and no longer a mere paduan she should consider who she wants to take on as an apprentice. She didn't seem particularly anxious to accept the responsibility of passing her biscuit knowledge on to someone else.

   I brought down some bee equipment with me so that I can get Autumn and Chloe set up with some beehives.  We spent several afternoons scraping and painting that various hive parts I had brought. They are going to put the beehives at the Matiaco's home where they also have a joint chicken project. In fact the beehives were the Matiaco's suggestion.  Apparently Steve has a friend who says he can get them a swarm.  However, I suspect I will be able to get them package bees sooner than the friend will be able to get them a swarm.  In addition to painting hives, I also brought down my bee class power point disk so we had a few hours of bee class on Wednesday.

    I also conducted a hula class with some of the Kang girls. I feel badly that the non local grand daughters are missing out on the hula lessons.  I thought I'd give the Kangs some of the basics so they might have a better chance to pick up the hula from their cousins at cousin camp. We just worked on the footwork a little bit and a few other things, like pointing their arms in the direction they are moving while opening and closing the fingers.  Chloe seems to be making good progress on the ukulele.  She can play all three chords used in "Pupu Hinuhinu" and just needs to get more comfortable changing from chord to chord and practicing a strum pattern.

    This afternoon I did a little service project for Sarah by butchering their rooster.  It seemed that almost everyone was on board with the decision except for grand daughter Elise. She had learned that roosters are somehow essential in order to get baby chicks from the eggs. She wasn't very willing to give up on the prospect of hatching baby chicks from their eggs. Elise having finally been overruled, I drove over to the Matiaco residence with Hannah as my trusty assistant.  As it turned out, Hannah was anxious to watch everything except the actual execution.  She decided it was much more important to go say hi to their cows than to watch Grandpa catch and kill the rooster.  Once she could no longer hear the rooster making noise she figured it was finally safe to come over and watch.  Early into the plucking, Hannah decided I should save her enough feathers to make into a feather duster. I'll be interested in seeing how that little project goes over with her parents.  Everything went pretty well until it came to the part where I had to remove the insides and save out the useable parts. As I was trying to extract the heart,  I accidently pushed on the rooster's still in tact diaphragm causing a very audible "braawk". Hannah was quite impressed and asked me to do it again. I managed to push on the diaphragm again, causing our deceased, headless, featherless, and footless rooster to speak from the dead a second time.  I guess the "braawk" sound that chickens make is solely from their throat. I suppose this is one time I won't get any complaints that I haven't included any photos.

    As I write this post, the rooster is simmering in a pot on the stove. I wasn't able to locate Sarah's crock pot so I am cooking the rooster the old fashioned way.  He smells much better now than he did earlier today. He should be chicken and dumplings by dinner tomorrow night.