No Place For a Stroller

Over the weekend we had Rose's daisy scout troop out for a farm tour.  The girls had a blast playing in the pit and on the hammock.  We've had an unusual coldish snap lately, and it was beautifully, unseasonably cool and pleasant on Saturday.  The weather was perfect and dry, not unlike southern California.
They got to feed the goats, pet a kind of ugly adolescent meat chicken, see a newborn piglet and taste straight-from-the-cow fresh milk!  We also brought some watermelon to share with them, and my mom made an agua fresca from soursop that was very refreshing. 


Otherwise, the only thing that wasn't quite perfect was that I misjudged the walking capabilities of average American people.  I realized this as I was bringing them up to see the cows and observed that many of them had pained faces, were breathing heavily and didn't seem very enthusiastic to walk all the way across the farm again to see the pigs after that.  One daisy scout tapped my leg and informed me that she had TWO scratches already.  I told her she was lucky she only had that many, and Ethan mentioned that we had once contemplated naming the farm "Poky Pastures."


One poor woman tried to bring a very nice jogging stroller for her toddler, which she abandoned in the milking paddock for most of the tour.  I just hope it left with all the wheels intact, because really the farm is no place for a stroller.  It was painful to watch her struggle to push it through the waist-high rye cover crop in the garden to see the baby chickies.  There's still the occasional hidden cactus in there.  I thought maybe we could have offered to put her toddler in the wheelbarrow with Clothilde, but then it still has manure and moldy hay stuck to the bottom.  Oh well.

Clothilde was strangely fascinated with the stroller and kept trying to climb in while we were still in the milking paddock feeding the goats.  Strange, because when we tried to put her in the stroller at home she screamed and tried to throw herself out face first.  It's probably the same phenomenon of how a car seat is very fun when it's not strapped into a vehicle.