Spokane Family Farms Field Trip

We saw miniature donkeys.
The kids got to collect eggs straight from the chickens

they thought this was great fun.


They thought it was a great view looking out the door of the hen house

I thought it was a great view looking in.

They all waited with eager expectation to see

the only week old

baby bunnies!

The children regarded the new calf with suspicion. The new calf likewise regarded the children.

This was about as much snuggling as I could muster from either party:

We had a tour of the milking and bottling facility that was very informative. Spokane Family Farms is the only place that does their own bottling around here. That means their milk goes directly from the cows to your table. Trish did a great job explaining many of the benefits of that. For example, they produce grade A milk, which before was just mixed with all the other grades of milk that other farmers produced at the processing plant. Now that you can buy it directly, you have an opportunity to get the highest quality milk. They take exceptional care of their animals, feed them well, heck we could even learn their names if we wanted. Also, as they say, it's local and you can pick it up yourself so, "If you want it any fresher you would have to get your own cow." Pretty cool.

The children were not that excited to learn about the ins and outs of homogenization and pasteurization, although I thought it was fascinating.

They had more fun rollicking in the hay.

They weren't so sure about the molasses. They had these big bins to bolster the nutrition of some new stock they got that was not in the best of health when they purchased them. They said they prefer to use nutritional and natural methods to care for the animals whenever possible. (We also learned that this included twice a day douching for some of the cows - oh the joys of a dairy farm!)

Then the best part of the tour: Milk and COOKIES :)