Farm Day!

Today was another school-family partnership day for Brian’s class at Root!  This time, Brian and I drove out to NC State’s Animal Science center.  It was a decent drive outside the city, and as we were bumping along the fields (they had us drive right out into the pastures to park), Brian commented that we were really going out to the farm!  We walked through the fields to the barns, and quickly met up with Ms. Sarah Catherine and Ms. Misty.  It was looking like rain, and Brian’s teachers said that none of his classmates had made it so far, so we went inside.  Brian immediately started running around, visiting all the animals Casa Bonita style [1].  We got him to slow down just a bit, long enough to wait his turn at some of the stations.  Brian got to hold a bunny named Dr. Who, and he really liked the different kinds of baby chicks.  We learned that a baby turkey is called a poult, and he got to hold one of those, too.  Brian got to practice milking a pretend cow, and visited the lambs and pigs.  Later, we went outside with Ms. Misty to get some NC State Ice Cream.  Brian asked the students, “Don’t you have any mint chocolate chip?”  but today was only vanilla.  To our surprise, it was free (and who can complain about that!)   About the time we had our ice cream in hand, there was a downpour.  We quickly scrambled for shelter under the picnic tents and climbed up onto some hay bales.  It rained so hard and so fast, within minutes there were inches of standing water all around us!  This was very exciting.  😉  But, we just ate our ice cream and watched the rain (getting just a bit wet), and by the time we were done, the rain had stopped and the moat around us had more or less gone.  We went back inside and Brian got to try using a lasso to rope a pretend steer.  (I had a little mom pride that my boy could do it on the second try–most of the kids couldn’t do it at all!)   Then it was back to the birds, and Brian got to hold another baby chick.  After that, it was time to go and sprinkling again, so we shared my tiny emergency umbrella and slogged back through the pastures (making a game out of avoiding all the, ah, brown stuff. 😉    All in all, a really fun field trip!

 

[1] Reference to an episode of South Park, where Eric Cartman has less than a minute to enjoy Casa Bonita before the police arrest him.