down on the farm

Rachel has always been in love with animals (from afar....like in books or on TV, but up close she's actually a pretty big scaredy-cat). I think I've shared before that though my husband and I aren't animal fans, we've bought a zoo membership the last two years to help feed her interest. She plays with her Noah's Ark animals and Circus Animals (both Little People sets) like crazy lately as well as a set of little plastic animals she has. We look at lots of animal books and she loves animal shows. In fact, one of her all time favorite videos is still Baby Einstein's Baby MacDonald DVD. (She's still enamored with Baby Einstein, even at almost 2 1/2!). She talks non stop throughout the 30 minute video, naming everything on the farm, including the silo, combine, and windmill.

So imagine her excitement this weekend to go to a real farm, complete with a windmill (that's the part she seemed to enjoy the most)! A local metropark has a historical farm as a part of the park. She'd been before, but it was about a year ago, so she didn't remember it.

We waited until after her nap to go, which means we didn't get there until about 3:40. When we drove up we saw a sign saying they closed at 4:00, so we were quite disappointed (it's about a half hour drive from our house, so we had driven all that way and would only have a few minutes). We rushed past the hen house, even though Rachel was very interested in all of the chickens, because we wanted to get to the barn and make sure we saw the animals, figuring we could see the chickens on the way out. When you first walk in the barn the horses are immediately on the left. She had been talking and talking about seeing the "hoe-sies," but was scared to death when she actually saw them. She turned her head away and laid it down on Daddy's shoulder instead of reaching out to pet them as we had hoped. She wouldn't go see them again after that. I think they were just too big for her little self.

Next came the sheep. She did a little "baa-ing" at them, but made it clear that she really only cared about seeing the cows in the barn. The farmer in the barn let us know that it wasn't a cow, but an ox, while Rachel moo-ed at it for awhile.

Then we headed out to the pig pen. Covering our noses. Ick. We didn't spend much time there, though these piglets were rather interesting to watch.

Turkeys and baby ducklings rounded out the rest of the farm animals. Rachel had little interest in them, which surprised us. She kept saying that she wanted to see the cows and the roosters. We went back to see the cows, and then headed out to the hen house, which is between the barn and the parking lot.

But first we stopped where they had these old fashioned games set up. Daddy wants to build her a marble run--she loved it. Mommy and Daddy took turns walking on stilts.
Daddy said he wasn't too good at it, but I used to have a pair that my grandpa built me when I was young, and it was kind of like riding a bike....I got on them and it was pretty easy to do (he took a picture of me on the stilts, but it's of my back, not my face, so I'm choosing not to put it on here!).

We finally headed back out to see the roosters and then leave. But they had put them away!!! The farm was closed, and they let us hang around well after 4:00, but they were cleaning up and one of their tasks must be to make sure the chickens are back in their house. Rachel was disappointed, but quickly cheered up when we told her we were going to go find the playground. "Pwaygwound? Pwaygwound?" is all we heard for the next few minutes as we drove to the back of the park to find it.

So we found it, she played, back and forth from the small playground to the big playground, and she ran us ragged. It was a fun afternoon.