Back to Sunflower Farm

Sunflower Farm closes its gates for the season on the last day of October, so at the very end of the month, we squeezed in a second visit with our friends Gretchen, Lyndi, and Miles. We just love this place, and will look forward to going back next year.

King Goat

Hiding Places

Dueling Turkeys

Two Princesses in their Magical Carriage 

Me and my favorite two and a half year olds

Peek!

Baby Chicks

Emily got to witness a barn cat catching and eating a mouse. Crunch crunch crunch!

Back to the corn house. 

Yep, Addie got to eat an apple in the corn house. She didn't contract any diseases.

A little bigger on this second trip, Elizabeth got to get out of the stroller a little more to do her own exploring.

Elizabeth watches Addie feed the goats.

Gretchen and Miles

Addie, Lyndi and Emily

Giant Lego Blocks, now these are cool!

Time for another pony ride! This time, the girls each got their own ride, and they rode all on their own!!

Cowgirl in training Emily

Cowgirl in training Addie

One of the very most exciting things to do at Sunflower Farm (next to riding ponies, of course) is the zipline!

Sunflower Farm

This fall we discovered an amazing and magical place called Sunflower Farm in Longmont. It is a working farm with activities available for kids and their families during select times throughout the year.

 

Love it!

 We met friends at the farm, and our first stop was at the corn house (a shed full of corn that the kids can dig in and take by the handful to feed the goats). While us moms fed our babies, Emily made friends with the goats and Addie had a blast playing in the corn house.

Emily poses with her new goat friends

BFFs :)

 

Mom, it's like a house-sized bean bin! :)

Next, it was over to the pony for a RIDE!

While the thought of riding a pony was super exciting, Addie was perhaps even MORE excited to put on a helmet!

 

The excitement was contagious, and Elizabeth was buzzing!

Ear to ear grins

After the pony ride, we found a great spot for a little picnic lunch. We had a few curious hen visitors.

 

Elizabeth chats it up with her buddies

 When the kids were finished eating, they went to explore a hay maze nearby, and found a little clutch of eggs. If you look closely, you'll see the little mouse we got to watch scurrying around the eggs.

 

Soap on a rope!

Hello baby chick!

The girls had such a great time, and I had so much fun watching them!

All tuckered out!

Lee Martinez Farm

We joined the Rices to visit one of their favorite Fort Collins spots, the Lee Martinez Farm.

It's a magical little place where kids can feed animals, explore old farm equipment, get dirty and HAVE FUN! We bought some goat feed for twenty-five cents a scoop and Emily and Addison fearlessly fed the little critters.

There's an awesome old red tractor that all the kids had a great time driving. 

 

 

We took a stroll down a path surrounded by old farm equipment. There were signs by each of the pieces telling all about what it had been used for. It's incredible to think about how very different life was like a hundred years ago.

At the end of the path there were gardens, some edible and some just plain beautiful. 

 

There is a little museum that you can walk through with more old farming tools. Here's a collection of husking gloves. 

And here's a milking stool. Used in the 1920s, "this ingenious device was strapped across the hips of a milker so they could move from one cow to the next." 

Three curious youngsters in the museum.

A pony!!!

 

Elizabeth did not sleep well on our drive up to Fort Collins, so she took a little nap while we walked around. 

We ended our trip to the Farm at the water well pump, taking turns pumping and splashing.