Jean-Luc and Philippe look for an idea

_Elsa_

Philippe is so excited about this contest. He wants to do a set of twin scarecrows. No wait, he is changing his mind. Now he wants to do a real spooky scarecrow. Jean-Luc suggests that they look online to see what they can find.

Jean-Luc isn’t sure what to type in on Google so he just types ‘scarecrow’. He comes across an article and begins reading it.

‘A dearth of children in the wake of the Great Plague, some historians surmise, led farmers to use adults to guard their crops, some keeping watch in straw huts as Native Americans did, evident in an 1585 watercolor by artist John White of Secotan, an Algonquin village in present-day North Carolina, says Mary Beth Norton, historian of Early American Farming at Cornell University. Others stood on wooden lookouts. But as farms grew larger, in their place human-like effigies rose from the fields and thus was born the scarecrow.

Its symbolism is universal, but the original scarecrows were nothing like the now familiar straw-stuffed icon of Halloween. Scarecrows, sometimes bearing an animal skull or rotting produce, were placed in fields in the spring and were burned after the Autumn harvest in celebration, their ashes returning nutrients of potassium and nitrogen to the soil. In Great Britain they are known as hodmedods, murmets and Hay-man, Tattie bogle or bodach-rocais (old man of the rooks). To the Bengali’s it’s a kaktadua. A straska to the Czech’s. The Russians, a pugalo, just to name a few.’ (Info here) 

“Jean-Luc let’s look at some scarecrow pictures,” Philippe says. “You can read the history behind it later.”

The twins finally find 2 scarecrows that they both agree on. Now they just have to gather the material that they will need. 

Let’s continue here - Red Rabbit finds info on a Scarecrow Festival

Start at the beginning - Seasons come and season go – the scarecrow