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halojedhaFor ages I've been yearning to take E to meet some animals. They are obsessed with animals - their sketchbook is full of birds and fish, they get tremendously excited when they ever meet a dog or cat, and their favourite books all involve animals - but haven't had many chances to meet many different kinds during the pandemic, and were too young to really appreciate it before that. This morning I finally got to realise that dream, and met up with a friend and their kid E's age and went to a farm park!
It was Deen Farm Park in South London, chosen for its favourable location for the friend. It was forecast rain so we brought all our waterproofs, wellies and umbrellas, but in the end there was only very minor drizzle after we arrived, and after that the weather was fine. We met different kinds of chickens, pheasants, ducks, songbirds and turkeys, which I don't think I'd seen up close before - they really are enormous, with flamboyant tailfeather displays and strange brightly coloured tiny dinosaur heads. There was a horse riding arena, so we got to watch the horses trotting around, and there were a couple of pens for smol animals - one containing a couple of large, inert rabbits, and the other containing a mostly invisible burrowing guinea pig. They weren't available for petting, and there wasn't much to look at.
The highlight for me was the paddocks, where we met cows including a cute sleepy foal, large black cheerful sheep that came to the fence to get food and pettings, some donkeys way out of reach to prevent them getting fed, a tall black fluffy alpaca, two beautiful black pigs, and loads of different sized excitable goats, some very short and some the size of small horses, which all crowded round making a big fuss and expertly hustling for food. There were two baby kids too, a white and a black one curled together in a yin yang. I temporarily really wanted goats. (The cuteness is now out of sight, and I'm home and present to how many other hobbies I already don't have time for, so the intense desire has passed.)
E enjoyed it a lot - they fed goats from their hands and wandered off a lot to look at things, entailing several episodes of "where's our child" which is always a sign they're having a good time. On the way home they said their favourite animals were "the guinea pig rummaging around under the hay" (top use of vocabulary there, our kid) and the ducks. It's their birthday this week so we're planning another trip to a different farm park in Surrey, which is closer to us (less suitable for friends or we'd have gone today) and way bigger with a lot more activities. I had a really good time this morning, and I'm looking forward to more!
It was Deen Farm Park in South London, chosen for its favourable location for the friend. It was forecast rain so we brought all our waterproofs, wellies and umbrellas, but in the end there was only very minor drizzle after we arrived, and after that the weather was fine. We met different kinds of chickens, pheasants, ducks, songbirds and turkeys, which I don't think I'd seen up close before - they really are enormous, with flamboyant tailfeather displays and strange brightly coloured tiny dinosaur heads. There was a horse riding arena, so we got to watch the horses trotting around, and there were a couple of pens for smol animals - one containing a couple of large, inert rabbits, and the other containing a mostly invisible burrowing guinea pig. They weren't available for petting, and there wasn't much to look at.
The highlight for me was the paddocks, where we met cows including a cute sleepy foal, large black cheerful sheep that came to the fence to get food and pettings, some donkeys way out of reach to prevent them getting fed, a tall black fluffy alpaca, two beautiful black pigs, and loads of different sized excitable goats, some very short and some the size of small horses, which all crowded round making a big fuss and expertly hustling for food. There were two baby kids too, a white and a black one curled together in a yin yang. I temporarily really wanted goats. (The cuteness is now out of sight, and I'm home and present to how many other hobbies I already don't have time for, so the intense desire has passed.)
E enjoyed it a lot - they fed goats from their hands and wandered off a lot to look at things, entailing several episodes of "where's our child" which is always a sign they're having a good time. On the way home they said their favourite animals were "the guinea pig rummaging around under the hay" (top use of vocabulary there, our kid) and the ducks. It's their birthday this week so we're planning another trip to a different farm park in Surrey, which is closer to us (less suitable for friends or we'd have gone today) and way bigger with a lot more activities. I had a really good time this morning, and I'm looking forward to more!
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Date: 2021-07-04 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2021-07-07 08:20 pm (UTC)