We are blessed to have friends who own a dairy farm and since we are currently doing a unit on cows (Micah) and farms (Laural), we decided that a trip to the farm was in order for this week. We started with a ride on the antique John Deere tractor with Farmer Bill.
Laural loved it, especially since she got to steer the tractor a little bit.
Micah seemed really keen to get on the tractor but a moment after sitting down, he had enough and was reaching out for me. Poor guy.
After the tractor rides, we walked past the one pasture full of heifers (you can see them behind the tractor in the pics above) toward the hutches where they keep the calves. They had quite a few! Most cows, of all ages, tend to be a little frightened of people they aren't familiar with, so it took us a little doing to find a couple that didn't mind letting us pet them. One, in particular, seemed to really enjoy having it's head scratched.
Laural tried to let the calf lick her but after a lick or two, it lost interest. It seemed to love licking grown up arms. We figured that since grown ups tend to sweat more than kids, the calf was enjoying the taste of our salty skin. By the way, in case you didn't know it, cow tongues are really, really rough!
Micah had no interest in trying to touch the calves at this point.
Isn't he cute atop that big bale o' hay?
The last thing we did was visit the milking cows. They were eating. Micah finally decided he would touch a cow.
We had a wonderful time at the Moyer's farm. Even Steve got to see some things he'd never seen before, like the milking parlour. Bill and Carol answered all of our questions and even opened the mouth of one of the older calves so we could see their one row of teeth. I never knew that cows only had teeth on the bottom! It just goes to show, you're never too old to learn something new!
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