Farm Bureau has a book barn available for people to take around to different schools and day cares. It's a little barn-shaped bookcase on wheels filled with accurate farming books. Kids can check them out of the bookcase and learn all about real farms and food.
I took it to my boys' classroom and read them 'Extra Cheese, Please! Mozzarella's Journey from Cow to Pizza' and 'How Did That Get In My Lunchbox? The Story of Food'. I asked each kid a question about dairy, and every right answer got them a string cheese stick.
I also brought in a bottle that calves drink from when they're first born ... because it looks just like a baby bottle, but giant, so it always makes kids laugh.
My kids go to school in a fairly rural community. (There are tons of dairies on my road - let alone my county, which is second in the state for milk production.) But out of all the kids in their class, only one of them had ever been on a dairy farm before!
So it was fun doing a little lesson about their neighbors.
***
Meanwhile back on the farm ... it's STILL muddy. So muddy, in fact, that the builders can't take equipment back to the building site. While they wait for the ground to (freeze? Thaw? Dry out? Do whatever nature does when it's almost-spring?) they're doing what they can on the ground.
The boys were impressed. Big barns are just as exciting as little barns.
