Fun on the Farm

When I was a kid, we spent much of our summers in Yosemite. Back then, the Pioneer History Center in Wawona featured special events and activities for the kids every weekend. I can remember making candles from beeswax, making cornbread from scratch and watching horseshoes being made by blacksmiths. But above all else, I remember learning how to milk a cow.

For a city girl like myself, learning to milk a cow was thrilling. It was the first time I began to understand the connection between the earth, the animals and people.

It’s an activity I have long wanted to share with my own kids. So imagine how thrilled I was when I discovered that Pierce College’s agriculture department (right here in nearby Woodland Hills!) was hosting a farm celebration that included sheep sheering, wool spinning, petting zoos and, yes, cow milking!

And while the experience turned out to be a little different from how I remembered – this cow was in a trailer, not a barn and I am much bigger than I was as a kid – it was special to have my kids standing by watching the entire thing. Hopefully, soon enough they’ll be ready to try their own hands at it. For now, you’ll have to settle with a picture of me.

This year’s annual Farmwalk event had so many fantastic activities going on, it was a little tough to know how to get started. Luckily, we discovered the folks from Pierce had put together a Farm Scavenger Hunt just for kids. The idea was to tour each of several “units” throughout the farm to seek answers to questions about farm life.

Thanks to this ingenious activity, the big explorer now knows that cows have four stomachs, baby sheep are called lambs, and kidding is what it’s called when a goat has a baby.

We saw plenty of baby farm animals, including lambs,

a calf

and plenty of kids!

And then there were the horses. The kiddos absolutely adored the horses, especially the mini horses which the little explorer aptly called “doggies.”

Not only did we come face to face with farm animals we’ve mostly only seen in books, but we also learned about their connection to us. For example, there was a wool spinning display set up right next to where the sheep were being sheered. The big explorer was fascinated with the idea that from sheep’s fur comes fabric.

We also discovered what types of foods the animals on the farm eat. The big explorer had to touch each one of the samples on this display, then read about which animal ate it and why.

Since no trip to the farm for us would be complete without a tractor-drawn hayride, we made sure to take one before leaving. One last look around this fantastic slice of farm life right in the middle of the city.

Unfortunately, Farmwalk is only held once a year. But now that we’ve got a taste of farm life, you can be sure we’ll be making our way out to another local farm soon enough. After all, there are fruits and vegetables out there ripe for the picking …