We started the day with reading excerpts from "The Little House on the Prairies," talking about an aspect of the farm life in the 19th century. We also looked at an outline of different aspects and tasks that are performed on the farm by children starting at age 2. We then were tasked with creating our own narrative or poem depicting the farm life in the 19th century. This activity was important because it related to our field trip, which, if you couldn't tell by the title of this blog post, we went to Carriage Hill.
Here is my short narrative:
"I wake up every day to the roosting of my rooster; he always does it right by my window. I eat breakfast and get dressed to go outside and do my tasks. My sister, Faith, and I do a lot of the chores together. First is gathering the eggs from the chickens – that is always fun. My little brother, Jonah, gathers sticks and rocks out of the field so it can be plowed by Ronan, my older brother. As I milk one cow, Faith milks the other. I am starting to teach Jonah how to trim the hooves of our small animals, but he is not that good. It is now lunchtime, which means I have time to work on my reading skills and some math problems. I also have to work on scripture readings for service on Sunday morning for the little kids. After lunch, I go back out and finish trimming the big animals’ hooves – we only do this a few times a month. By the end of the day I have done so much, and I am only 13."
I had been to Carriage Hill a few times before, one time was going as a family day, and the second was for homecoming pictures my sophomore year. Once we got to Carriage Hill, we were able to go odd on our own, however my friends and I stayed in a group together. I pet sheep, and they were so cute and very loving. I knew their coat was thick, but I didn't really know how thick it was until I pet them today - underneath the first layer of wool, it was really soft. Their was one sheep that, when I pet right behind it's ear, it started to lean into the fence towards me - kind of like what a dog does when you pet behind it's ear. The hair on it's nose was also really soft. Our next stop was through the red barn to get to the horses. This was probably my favorite stop because horses are so cute and, sometimes, can be really soft. Two of them were very friendly and liked being pet, others not so much as them. We also saw pigs - they were kinda fatter than they should be - and it looked like one of the pigs' legs were hurt because it seemed to have a hard time walking. My friends and I set out to find someone to help the pig in case it was hurt, the lady at the front office said that it could be because they need their hooves trimmed soon, but she was going to find one of the animal people just in case.
We went to the picnic area where we decided to eat lunch. As we were eating, a cat came over and I picked it up - sadly I don't have any pictures of me with it, but enjoy these two pictures of cats that I saw while there.
After lunch, we decided to go on a short hike before we had to be back to the bus. We never actually went on the hike because we got distracted by the creek flowing under a bridge; a lot of other students were down there, so we decided to join. I got to stand in the water - it was slightly cold, but it also felt good.
What I learned as a result of everything was that, I love farm animals and I already know it would be SO much work to live on one and maintain it constantly.
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