Field Trip

Brooke had her first field trip of the year yesterday and it was a loooooong one. An all day Agriculture Fest at the county fairgrounds. The weather started off nice and cool and didn't heat up until it was almost time to go so that made it even better.

Our first stop on the tour was Judy the wonder cow and her miraculous milking teats (ok her name was Judy and I made up the rest...people should know that lactating is a miraculous thing)...

The older gentleman doing the presentation did a great job and after milking Judy he fielded questions. He must have been doing this a while because there were questions like "how do cows get pregnant?"....."how do we know they might be pregnant?"....and so on and so forth...this gentleman said "well they mate" pretty much to every question and then he kept on chuggin being sure to leave no room for a follow up question regarding "mating"....it was funny to see the parents squirm and giggle. It was also great to see the kids ooohing and aaahing when they saw the milk head into the holding tank. Immediate gratification and they were amazed at how much milk Judy could crank out...told you lactating is miraculous!

Next we headed to sheep shearing...

This particular guy had never been sheared so he was a bit, shall we say, sheepish? .....hahaha...hohoho...heehee....I crack myself up

The kids were very interested in this whole process and they loved feeling the wool afterwards, even if it totally grossed me out. I wasn't the only one, one of Brooke's teachers leaned over and said she didn't now if she had enough hand sanitizer for this!!! Funny!!!

Here's the naked little fellow...

Here is one of the big hits of the day....

Well who doesn't love a cute little piglet. Of course all the kids were petting the piglets and then announcing that they had "swine flu"....they thought that was downright hysterical.....Brooke included...4th grade humor is quite a treat...especially when experienced en masse.

We had a chance to hear about ranch horses.....

And do you see that little cutie on the left? She was like two or three and she was wearing the cutest little boots WITH spurs. Too sweet. Her parents were doing the horse demos.

After lunch we headed over to the actual Agriculture Museum that they have here and enjoyed lots of things there including the blacksmith...

and a great little talk about cotton and how its grown and harvested. Very kid friendly presentation.
We also had talks about rice, corn, beef, and the Dept of Agriculture was out to talk about lots of animals but specifically the coyote problem on some of the ranches.

The last station of the field trip was the seed necklace project. Very cute. The kids loved it and hopefully the seed Brooke has will sprout and we can plant it and she'll have a great little memory of the day.

It was a fun field trip and although it ran 45 minutes longer than I thought, it was so fun to get a free day with Brooke, to meet all her new classmates, and to learn a lot about this area where we now live. Brooke and I ended our field trip day checking out from the fairgrounds and we headed to get some Icees....perfect since the weather had warmed up significantly after lunch.

Super fun day!!

**Pardon my picture quality....my camera was not on it's usual settings and my pictures aren't so fabulous but the situation has been remedied and there is no need to make official complaints.