Tjernagels in Spain

NOW WE KNOW WHERE CHESTNUTS COME FROM

This past Saturday, Tim, Nathaniel and MaKayla drove an hour and a half north to the little farm of a new classmate of MaKayla's. They were invited to come and help harvest chestnuts. Being the city girl that I am, I had no idea where chestnuts come from. In fact the most I know about chestnuts is from the song..."chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."

So when the troops came home talking about how hard it was to harvest chestnuts I thought...good grief, it couldn't have been that bad. I probably was hoping that it wasn't that hard as it had been me that volunteered them all to help out with the harvesting...tee, hee.

So, here is what happened. Two weeks ago I went to the teachers meeting at MaKayla's school. I sat down in her classroom next to Carmen. She looked at me and said..."Are you MaKayla's mom"...I wondered how she could tell that by just looking at me as she has never seen MaKayla before and I hadn't opened my mouth yet to let her know that I had an accent. Mmmmm...I guess I better stop priding myself in the that I THINK I look like a Spaniard.

ANYHOW...we started talking about how the year was beginning, the struggles our girls were having, etc. After the meeting she asked me if I wanted to go and have a coffee. So off we went to have a coffee together...at 8:00 at night...yes, we must be in Spain...It was a real connecting time as it is rare that on the first encounter with a Spaniard they invite us to spend more time with them. So in the conversation it came out that her husbands dad had a farm up north and they were harvesting chestnuts. Of course I piped in that my husband grew up on a farm and missed it soo much and I was certain he would love to harvest ANYTHING.

And that is how the Saturday of chestnut harvesting happened. I asked Nathaniel how you harvest chestnuts. Here is his play-by-play...in his words...(as I heard it)

1...you go out into this place where there are lots of trees...did you know that is where chestnuts come from mom?

2...then the grandpa goes around with this stick that has a tennis ball on the end of it and he bangs and bangs and bangs at these fuzzy balls that are all over the ground (those are the fuzzy balls that are in the foto above)

3...then we go around, bending over the WHOLE TIME, and you pick up the chestnuts that fall out of the fuzzy balls

4...and mom, we had to wear gloves because the fuzzy balls are soo prickly and we had to pick up lots of fuzzy balls to get the chestnut out

5...by the end I was just crawling around because I was so tired of bending over...it was hard work.

They all did have a great time even though it was hard work. It was special to get to know the family of MaKayla's classmate. We are praying that we will have more opportunites to connect with them. They have called and invited us to have coffee and Carmen called last Friday to invite me to come to her school where she works to see the Halloween display they put together. It was a good connecting time.