Farm Life

Labor Day, the last day of a very long summer break, the last day to do something fun.  So I gave the kids several options on what they might like to do and what did they choose?  To go to a farm.

Yes, on the Gig Harbor city website, they list things to do and one of them is this farm that you can go to and get up close and personal with farm animals.  I knew that Emmy, my animal lover, would love this experience, or so I thought, but I was surprised that the boys also enthusiastically chose this.

London and a 5 day old chick.

Grammie and the goats

So off we went to the Gentle Giants Meadow Ranch.  This small farm hosts two Shire horses, a few other horses, goats, chickens, cows, sheep and a border collie.  The very nice guy who owns the ranch gave us a tour and immediately I realized that my kids have not been in the country enough.  Emmy was scared to death of the animals - she wouldn't even hold a baby chick, wouldn't go into the goat pen and wouldn't feed a horse a carrot.  She practically jumped in my arms when the cows came running in from the field! 

Grammie and the horses

The closest Emmy would come to feeding a horse.

Grammie and the cows

I did cut the kids a little slack since they have been living on an island with a dearth of farm animals for the last three years.  We smelled the pigs a lot on Okinawa, but rarely saw them and I don't think I ever saw cows in three years except for the one odd time a guy was walking an extremely large bull down the road by the beach...  Well, I digress.

After our visit to the farm (Grammie really enjoyed it!) we headed on down the road to Penrose Point park and had a nice walk.  I learned on this walk exactly how fast Mick is.  Since he was pulling on his leash a lot (especially after another dog had passed us), I thought it would be a good idea to take him on a little run to burn some energy.  We took off down the path and then he kicked it into high gear which was a whole lot faster than my high gear so I ended up temporarily flying through the air and landing flat out on the gravel path.  We couldn't see Mick for the dust - that dog is F-A-S-T.

Stevie helping Grammie over the tree

View of Rainier from the water