Celebrate Mom with Fresh Air, Good Food, and Farm Hospitality
Celebrate Mom with Fresh Air, Good Food, and Farm Hospitality
Dig Deeper Blog
Kids Love Baby Animals
Scottie Jones
1 min read
Spring means baby animals for many farms. There may be lambs (baby sheep) or kids (baby goats) or calves (baby cows) or chicks (baby chickens). Test your baby nameology. What kind of animal is a cria, a gosling, or a foal? (ANSWER: baby alpaca, baby goose, baby horse)
Barns become nurseries and pastures become playgrounds. You can sometimes watch these baby animals being born and, if they need it, help with bottle feeding. It's here you come closest to new life and here where kids are often fascinated to see something younger and smaller than themselves.
Holding a baby lamb or chick can be magical, if the farmer lets you. Just be careful. Kids love baby animals and want to take them home, so it's sometimes hard to explain to a weeping child that the lamb will eventually grow into a sheep, too big for the backyard and with nowhere to run and play in the city!
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Where Hospitality Comes Naturally
Across the country, farms are welcoming guests in growing numbers, from short visits to longer stays, offering a close look at everyday farm life. It’s an invitation to see where food comes from and to experience farm life. Those who have chosen to do this have done so thoughtfully. There is no performance or theme, but instead a form of welcoming, a chance to share the land and introduce the families who care for it. From the outside, visiting a working farm can feel a little unexpected. The farmer has laden the breakfast table with jams they made and eggs fresh from the chicken coop. You step outside your door to pick fresh fruit from the orchard, or maybe you’re invited to try your hand at milking a dairy cow or holding a bottle of warm milk for a calf. The lights are on for your late arrival, and a friendly note on the table welcomes you to the farm. This is a visit to a family’s home in the countryside. At Farmstay, we work with farms and ranches across the country that welcome guests in many different ways. Some are just beginning their hospitality journey. Others have been opening their gates for decades, shaping hospitality through lived experience rather than any single formula. This is a small glimpse of the many farms that do this kind of hosting especially well (the first three farms on our list were early U.S. pioneers in farm hospitality, welcoming guests as far back as the 1950s).