Monday, October 13, 2014

Preschool Trip to the Farm

This morning Harper and I headed out to a farm with his preschool class. The farm we went to was about 45 minutes away, and as we left rain started to fall. I decided we were just going to stick it out and go, and we did.

While we waited for everyone to show up, Harper watched the chickens and bunnies do whatever it is that chickens and bunnies do.

He really liked the bunnies and was happy to feed them straw.

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Once everyone got there we got a lesson on bee’s. They brought us in out of the rain for that part, which was nice! The kids learned a lot about bee’s and I learned a few things as well:

  1. The head honcho bee is the queen.
  2. Most bees around the hive are female, and they are called worker bees.
  3. Male bees are called drones and don’t serve much purpose beyond helping make baby bees.
  4. Beekeepers use a smoker to lull the bees to sleep, or at least make them go to the bottom of the hive while the keeper gets the honey.
  5. Bee’s communicate in a few ways to let their “sister” know where to find pollen.
  6. Bee’s are cool.

Here’s a picture of Harper watching bee’s in an active hive. We even got to see the queen!

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After our bee lesson, we went out in the rain to feed the animals. We were able to feed the goats and cows, and Harper enjoyed feeding both. We weren’t allowed to feed the pigs as we were told they may mistake our fingers for food and, since they have top and bottom teeth, it might hurt to get bit by one of them.

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Next up was a walk through a field of popping corn. The farmer told us we could pick our own ear to bring home to make popcorn with and it might have been the highlight of the day for Harper. He just loved walking through the tall stalks and choosing just the right ear.

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Once we had our perfect ear of corn we took a walk through the corn maze. It was seriously muddy but luckily the walk was very short. Once we made it out of the maze, we all loaded up on the hay ride. It was a pretty crazy ride through some rough terrain, including going through a river, but it was pretty fun. The kids loved the bumping and we parents couldn’t help but laugh at how rough the whole thing was. Going through the river was pretty cool and unique to this farms hayride.

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Our final stop for the morning was to choose our pumpkin from the pumpkin patch. It was raining pretty good and Harper tripped over pumpkin vines three times while we were in the patch. He was pretty muddy when we got to our car, but he did get 2 perfect pumpkins!

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It rained and rained the entire time we were at the farm this morning, but Harper and I had a great time. I loved spending the morning with him and he told me he’d had a fun time on the farm too, so it was a morning well spent.

It’s hard to believe I’ll be doing this with Dakota next year…

3 comments:

Leslie said...

Looks like y'all had fun even though it was rainy. I miss those days!!! I noticed that you have a lot of visits from Maryland on you feed.. Do you live in Maryland? ( Me too)

Great photos!! Nice facts about bee's.. I am too afraid of them.

Angela V. said...

Hi Leslie! Yes, we're in Maryland! We did have a fun day despite the rain...we sure were soaked when we got home though!

Leslie said...

Well.. hello fellow marylander!! : ) I swore to myself that I would get outside and start moving today.. and ewww.. to wet and ugly. Glad you guys had fun!

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