Down at the farm.

It's funny that when the kids were little I loathed the petting zoo. Really, I loathed any community activity created for families, as I knew it would draw crowds of kids (duh!) and their parents and I am not a fan of kids or crowds. So I never took them to the little local farm. That was the Grandparent's responsibility.

Now that we are all older and more capable, we've been volunteering at the farm once a week since early spring. It is the perfect opportunity to let the kids choose to give back to their community, to volunteer, at something they enjoy, that they chose to do. I've struggled with the reality that our culture lacks many opportunities for kids to give back in a real way, not just with money, and part of this is that we've become so libelous, many places will no longer accept children as volunteers, even with parental accompaniment. So the petting zoo is one of our last bastions for kids to lend a hand and really feel like they're DOING something, really helping out.

Our jobs vary each week, but there are some basic tasks we expect to do at every visit.

We need to cajole the pony and donkeys, to get them back in their corral before the public arrives. Those guys know kids are not to be obeyed.

Finally, success!!

We need to change all the water buckets for the goats, after we help run the stampede of goats down to the petting area.

There are a lot of water buckets!

There are peacocks all over the farm, screeching their high-pitched calls and fluffing out their feathers. Yes, it IS beautiful, a spectacle of nature, but these guys do nothing but THIS all morning long, and honestly, they kind of get in our way. They're not quick to move because they want to be sure we've seen all their glory. They give you the eye, saying "Do you SEE this, how glorious we are? Are you stunned at our beauty?"  They don't get it that we're not peahens, we're hu-mans.

And frankly, the peahens don't care about the cocks feather-show either.

There's always poop to scoop. (The other side of Ivy's bucket says "Zoo Poo Patrol". She feels very responsible with this task).

Our reward at the end of our shift, when the daycare and school groups leave, is having the baby goats all to ourselves. They climb on us and chew our sleeves. We just sit there and let them fight over our laps, the little cuties.

I try to give my love to those tired mama goats. They like a good chin-scratch session.


On our way out we fawn over the baby pigs.

 It's a pretty good way to spend the day. :)

xoxo

C