Great Country Farms

Three weeks ago I took the kids out to Bluemont, VA (about 25 minutes west of Leesburg) to go to Great Country Farms. We had been there previously, last October, for Natalie's school field trip, and I thought Henry was now old enough to really appreciate the farm. I was right - the kids both had a fantastic time! And since the weather wasn't that great (it was threatening to rain most of the time), we had the farm mostly to ourselves while there!

We started out the farm with this photo - compare it with this one, and you'll see how Natalie has grown!

 We headed over to the petting zoo area first. I have quite a few photos of the sheep, goats, cows,etc, but I'll wait and post my favorites on the photography blog. However, I had to include this very sweet one here of Natalie petting the pony.

I also had to include this photo here. This peacock was in a cage with a peahen, and I guess it was mating season, because he kept presenting his feathers to her and rattling them, which I'm guessing means "Hey, baby!" in peacock.

 In the play area we encountered this child-sized chess set (it's too small to really call it "life sized!"). The kids had a blast moving the pieces around!

 Natalie again thoroughly enjoyed the giant jumping pillow. Henry, on the other hand, wanted no part of it.

 While Natalie was jumping, Henry and I were feeding the geese. Henry thought it was really cool how they would eat right out of the cup. And man they were greedy little things!

 The kids spotted this swing set in the play area and we had to take a break to swing for a while. I'm so proud of Natalie that she can now pump her legs to keep herself going! And Henry can hold onto the non-baby swings now too - they're both so big!

 To one side of the swings, and a little up the hill, is a water wheel and "maze" that water flows through.

 Henry in particular loved watching the water flow!

 Down the hill from the barn (seen above behind Henry, and in the far background in the picture below) there was a "cow train". Natalie of course hopped right in - Henry took about 5 full minutes to convince, but once I climbed into one of the larger cars, he was willing to go in it with me and sit on my lap. Of course, once we started moving, he absolutely LOVED it!

 In our train ride around the farm, I saw a couple of things we had missed the first time, so we wandered back through the petting zoo area to see a few more animals and to go play in the corn bin. Natalie loved being in there

 ...while Henry refused to step into the corn. He did sit on a chair that was in bin, and eventually poured some corn with a cup, but definitely would not put his feet in.

Once an hour there was a "hay ride" (really a 3-car wood truck) that took us out to the pick-your-own strawberries field. The kids each had a container and had a blast filling them!

 We took the hayride back to the main part of the farm to pay for our strawberries (both of those containers above cost us $2 total! I wish I'd bought 3 times as much). At that point I realized we'd been there over 3.5 hours, we'd eaten all of our snacks, and it was definitely time to get home. When walking back to the car we noticed a pond near the parking lot, and wanted to go look at the geese swimming in the pond. I was able to get this shot below of the kids (along with a few others, but this is my favorite). Man I love these kids.