Family Time & The Family Economy

With our new school schedule we have added an evening "family time".  Our first family time together last week was met with mixed reviews.  Farmer John wanted to get everyone involved with his future business, Bamboo On The Fly (tentative name), and so we all tumbled out to the garage to work on his current Bamboo Fly Fishing Rod.  I must admit only John and our two littlest (Reagan and Taylor) were overly excited to do this.  Later I realized that I had to confess sin because I was less than championing my husband's vision at the time. (Which is really silly because I very much want him to leave his "corporate" job for a home-based, family biz.)

Yes, we put a blowtorch in the hands of our 13 year-old son!

 

 And our 15 year-old daughter

 Not our 4 year-old- she was content to make up her own games with balls and badmitton birdies!

 

Here I am with the torch.  The pieces of bamboo for the rod are slid into the copper pipe and then the pipe is heated with the torch.  This dries the bamboo.  You could see the steam being released at the tube ends.

 

 

As you can see the garage is highly unkempt.  Farmer John is on vacation this week and so one of our projects (practical arts for school) will be cleaning the garage.  By mid-October we'll be getting heavy frosts/freezes and the cars will need to be parked inside overnight. (Farmer John does not want to scrape ice at 3:30 in the morning!)

 

Leave me a comment if you are interested in a Handcrafted Bamboo Fly Rod!

 

If you are wondering about family economies check out Kevin Swanson's Generations Radio show (search the archived shows for "family economies) and Herrick Kimball over at The Deliberate Agrarian writes frequently on this topic too!