Butterflies and Butter

I found out about 10:30 yesterday morning that there was a Butterfly Festival going on at The Florida Museum of Natural History, so Blaze and I got dressed and headed right over.



We took a walk around the butterfly garden behind the museum and looked for the butterflies and flowers on the chart we were given. We also learned that the Zebra butterfly is the state butterfly of Florida, so we made a special effort to find one of those and get a picture.



It was a very windy day, so taking pictures of butterflies outdoors was pretty hard.

As we were heading into the museum, we stopped to watch this group of little girls who did Irish Step Dancing. They were very good.



Inside the museum, there were childrens crafts and informational booths set up.





There were butterfly masks, paper wings, and pipe-stem cleaner antennas to make, or if a boy (like mine) thought a butterfly mask was too girly, there were bat masks and bat wings, since bats are pollinators, too.





There was also a display of live bats that we looked at for quite awhile, because neither of us had ever seen at live bat so close up before. The woman at that booth gave us a card inviting us to a Bat Festival next weekend, so maybe we'll go to that next Saturday. It sounds like a great pre-Halloween field trip.


Back at home, later in the afternoon, Blaze and I made homemade butter, because he had been interested in how it was made when we were reading about it in Little House in the Big Woods.



We poured heavy cream into a canning jar and made sure the lid was on tight. Then we put "A Child"s Celebration of Music" on the CD player and danced around, taking turns shaking the jar.



When we got tired of shaking it. We sat on the floor with our feet together and rolled it back and forth, seeing how fast we could keep it moving.
It was very obvious when it started to turn into butter, because we could suddenly see into the jar again (prior to that, the glass had been coated in white).



When I was sure that it had really separated into butter and buttermilk, I poured it all out into a stainer.



Then I salted the butter and put it in a bowl in the refrigerator to set up.

Last night at dinner we were able to have our homemade butter on toast.