Petting Farm

As part of Lilli's birthday celebration [1], we took her to Eugster's petting farm [2], which is about 20 minutes southeast of us in Stoughton. The staff was very friendly and inviting and so were the animals.

For a while we pulled her around in a wagon, but the novelty of that eventually wore off and she insisted on walking or being carried.

There were chickens, ducks, a peacock, guineas, rabbits, pigs, a cow, a donkey, a pony, horses, goats, sheep, and kittens.

Lilli got to feed a bottle to the baby goats (and Leann declared that she wanted to take one home).

And she got to feed pellets to a couple of nannies (one of them was a little pushy).

And she fet pellets to some sheep that had recently been sheared.

And she got (to pretend) to milk one of the nannies. (You can see the hand of one of the employees helping out.)

Leann actually did manage to get some milk out of the nanny.[3]

Lilli also got to practice milking a fake cow. (I think she liked that more than the real thing.)

She also got to pet a pig.

The foyer to the restrooms featured a beehive behind glass…

…and a display of several different types of bird egg.

Besides animals, there were also tricycles (she had to try every single one)…

…tractors to climb on…

…and a BigToy.[4]

After that we bought some food pellets and tossed them to some sunfish and catfish in a pond. The way she talked about it afterwards, this may have been Lilli's favorite part of the trip.

Then we had a picnic under some shade trees. (Lilli struggled with the idea of sitting down to eat at a picnic—she thought it was run around and talk to the Daddy Longlegs [5] that were dropping from the tree.)

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Notes:

[1] See my post Lilli Turns Two!

[2] See http://www.eugsters.com/.

[3] They hinted that if we did the whole milking we could take the milk with us. I was tempted to try making my own goat cheese, but wasn't sure we'd have everything we need (rennet, cheesecloth, etc.), so I declined. If we ever go back, though, I may take them up on that offer because I love me some chèvre! (See my review of Shepherds chèvre here.)

[4] I learned to call these BigToys when I was a kid, but a quick Google search suggests that most people are not familiar with that term (really a brand name) and prefer "playground" or "playscape"—even though to me those terms can indicate a field where play is encouraged, regardless of the presence of a BigToy. Even the term "playground equipment" is too vague since see-saws, merry-go-rounds, swings, etc., are "playground equipment", too, but have their own name.

[5] I only use this term to refer to harvestmen (Order Opiliones), not crane flies (Order Tepulidae) or the cellar spider (Pholcus phalangioides). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy longlegs.