Pictures from Wednesday and Thursday

 The trail from the dorm to the farm

 View from the barn (on the left is the cheese house)

Tarentaise, the Farms For City Kids/Spring Brook Farm's award winning cheese

An aisle of cheese wheels in the cheese house

The 42 milking cows out for a little fresh air in the morning

Wednesday on the farm

Today was a great day for farming! As usual we woke up early, had a snack and began the morning farm chores.

The Blue Team: worked in the cheese house today, washing the wheels of Tarantaise. They thought the outfits they had to wear were pretty funny and they all took lots of pictures. While washing the cheese the students have to wear coveralls, hair nets and special boots.
The Grey Team: worked in the small animal barn today, they cleaned up after the calves, fed them special formula called "Milk Replacer", grain and water. They also fed the pigs, the goats and collected eggs from the chicken coop.
The Gold Team: worked in the dairy barn, tried milking "Benni"but she wasn't having any of that! So they switched to "Jeenan" who is a sweet, calm cow.  After milking the cow and tasting the milk the quote of the day was "it tastes like milk".

After morning chores all the students, teachers and farm staff picked apples to make apple cider. We collected them from the orchard and put them in crates and wheelbarrows to bring to the cider press.
It was hard to press the cider after awhile but it was well worth it.  We all enjoyed the cider at lunch.   We heard that the cider tasted like "heaven in a cup".

After lunch we went for a long hike to the Sugar Shack on the farm and learned about the process and history of making maple syrup.

Right now the students are playing "Farm Idol" and making up songs about the farm. The winning team gets dessert first!

Pictures from Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning

 "Max" the baby bull

Dairy cow dinner

Caught!! "Emily" the cow sneaking a bite of hay from the window!

Tuesday- First full day on the farm

Wake up was at 6:30am! Granola bars and apples before morning farm chores.

Blue Team: worked in the dairy barn this morning, according to team members they cleaned up a "volcano of poop". Ewww. In the morning they fed the cows hay and let them out of the barn to graze and during afternoon chores they fed them hay, grain and beet pulp. In the afternoon all the team members milked "Jeenan". About half the kids tried the milk.
Gold Team: worked in the small animal barn, they made formula for the baby calves, Sweet Pea is the youngest, she was born only 9 days ago! In the afternoon they measured their grain, washed their buckets and gave them milk.
Grey Team: worked in the cheese house cleaning 18 20lb wheels of cheese each. They were entrusted to wash the wheels of cheese that each cost $200! They learned about the two different kinds of cheese that Spring Brook Farm produces, Tarentaise and Reading. They had to get used to the smell of the cheese house as it can be a little stinky.

After breakfast the entire group helped clean the hutches for the calves and moved them inside for the winter. After lunch everyone helped to take down and put away fences for the winter. Then we all went to the small apple orchard and collected (and ate) lot's of apples to make cider tomorrow. 

For dinner we had 4 different choices of homemade pizza, salad, green beans, pineapple and 2 choices of baked pumpkin seeds from our pumpkins that we carved last night.

Pictures from Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning

Monday update

We arrived to the farm on schedule and moved our things into the dorm. The kids were quite impressed with the house we're staying in. We had a delicious lunch of grilled cheese, tomato soup and grapes and got ready to do chores. We did a safety tour of the farm and began our chores.

The Gold Team: Taylor, Vivian, Kyla, Savanah, Aylssa, Mahdi, Kyle and Javier. After the safety tour the Gold team cleaned the chicken coup and used wheelbarrows to move saw dust (clean and dirty) and put down a bed of fresh saw dust for chickens.
The Blue Team: Tasha, Jai, Brittany, Carol-lyn, Viswa, Ifaran, Steven and Kareen. After the safety tour the Blue team made formula for the baby calves, measured and weighed the grain to feed them, fed the goats and the heifers. Jai helped Max (a baby bull) learn to drink milk.
The Grey Team: Hakeem, Emily, Stephanie, Bartosz, Joshua, Ashley, Simi and Nicole. After the safety tour the grey team worked in the dairy barn, they fed the 42 milking cows hay and grain. They each got to milk Bentley the cow! Some of the students tasted even tasted milk!

We had baked ziti/lasagna, salad and rolls for dinner. Our evening activity was carving pumpkins, we have some very creative students with us!!
We celebrated Bartosz's birthday on Halloween with special "ghost cakes". The students then made journals to help them remember their trip.
We had a quiet night and everyone was excited for what was to come the next day.