Horses and Chariots

For some reason Mirin has been completely taken with the idea of building a chariot.  He found the modified bike wheels from the old horrible "Chickshaw" coop that has fallen into disuse and disrepair, and has been trying out different ways of attaching them to something he can ride on.  Because Rosie is the little sister, she is always the "horse."
Instead of finishing the roof of the barn, Ethan decided to help them out the other day, and came up with this extremely cumbersome version of the farm "chariot" with pieces from his junk pile.

Rosie was hitched up and it was tried out.

Mairie was watching:

"Dear God, what kind of a farm was I sold to?  What is wrong with these people??"

Oops!
Although it doesn't look like it in the pictures, the chariot game is primarily for the amusement of the "Horse."

Why Things Aren't Getting Done As Fast As They Should Be

So, the week before last Ethan had stopped by Goodwill to get some new farm pants, when he spied a bag of tennis balls for sale and bought them.  This has led to many brutal games of Tennis Ball Tag with Mirin (instead of doing chores/building barn/etc).

To defend himself, Mirin has created Monty Python-style armor out of junk he found laying around the farm.  Here is a colander taped to a broken chicken feeder for a helmet, with a broken galvanized poultry waterer for body armor, and a trash can lid shield.  He wanted me to post a picture up.

In the background you can see his leaf-bag hut he made.  It's wooden pallets nailed together, with a piece of plywood nailed to the top, feed bags stapled on one side and bags of leaves on the others.  The front has a massive chase top Ethan brought home years ago (I'm not exactly sure why) when he worked at the woodstove.  It was made slightly wrong, and had to be disposed of, and honestly it really hasn't come in handy around here in all these years until the kids started using it as the Junk Hut's "porch."
It's actually pretty cozy inside, and the pallets make little shelves.  It's ten times nicer than any of the things we saw built at the Finca Mycol "Earth Skills" gathering we were at two years ago.  The only downside is that we will have to take it apart in a couple of weeks when we need the leaf bags for the garden.