More From Manti

Growing up in the suburbs means I'm a step or two removed from my agricultural heritage. Sure, I plant a garden and try to fend off weeds, but it's not quite the same scale as being on a ranch or farming several of acres of land. This grander scale has always fascinated me, and so when I got up the morning after attending the Manti Pageant I found my brother-in-law baling hay just beyond their back yard. I was excited to see how those enormous half-ton bales are made. Here's the machine that does it all automatically:
When the bale is big and tightly enough rolled, the machine winds baling string around it, opens its broad mouth, and out rolls a new round bale. It's the coolest thing to see.

Lauri is great with teaching her children about all different kinds of things and giving them hands-on experiences. When we arrived she had half-sheets of cardstock taped to the table ready for trying out "pointalism," the technique of painting with dots like Seurat. We got to try our hand at it using acrylic paints and the unused eraser ends of pencils. Bronwyn has been clamoring for more ever since we got home.

Jay had the older boys come out to help with moving sprinkler pipe, something they had never done before. This pipe is a bit long and gangly for Evan to manage!


Owen carries his like a bazooka.

And finally, Lauri and Jay also keep two honeybee hives. They've just introduce a new queen to one hive. I was curious about what a queen bee looks like, so I got covered up in all the right gear and Jay pulled opened things up for me. It was amazing to see. The bees pretty much ignored us even though Jay pulled out several different "walls" to look at.

If you look carefully, you'll see the queen near the wood strip just to the left of center. Look at the left edge of the white thing at the top and directly beneath that, just under the wood strip, is the queen. She has a longer, caramel-colored body and tiny wings that don't look like they could really support her. The picture isn't in focus very well because I had the bee suit on and the thick leather gloves didn't allow for much fine-motor coordination!
The bees aren't in honey-making mode right now. They are busy encapsulating all of the baby bees, one per "well," with a papery substance to protect each little white pupae until it's ready to come out.