The Little Farm

There is a great place in Berkeley called The Little Farm, where kids can bring lettuce and celery and feed cows, pigs, goats, chickens, turkeys, and geese. We’ve gone several times, and have had to deal with children who too were frightened of the animals to attempt to feed them, but then threw tantrums when it was time to leave because they were having so much fun.

I took the girls back to The Little Farm yesterday, and for the first time, the older one actually fed the animals. At first, she would only throw stalks of celery over the fence to the waiting animals (usually hitting the animal, who luckily never seemed to mind). It took a few tries for her to master the art of holding the end of a celery stalk and getting just close enough for the goat or pig to grasp the other end, without freaking out about how close the animal was to her hand. She got in some tug-of-war matches with the goats before understanding when to let go. You really have no idea how much of a learned art feeding a farm animal is until you’ve watched a kid try to figure it out on her own.

She cheerfully dispensed two huge bunches of celery and one bag of lettuce (thrown by the handful to the chickens, turkeys and geese who noisily begged for more). The food was munched heartily amidst the happy squeals of two little girls. My youngest was fascinated by the pigs, shy of the goats, and terrified of the rooster who cock-a-doodle-dooed every few minutes. He was enclosed in a full cage, and we visited him several times so she could see that he was still neatly contained, but every time he crowed, she’d jump and cling to my leg. She also found the cows “big and scary,” but thought the pigs were “just like Wilbur” and even got up the nerve to pet them a few times. I guess all of those viewings of Charlotte’s Web have been good for something. Not calming her hysterical fear of spiders, but warming her up to pigs a bit.

Feeding Frenzy

One thing I’ve noticed about my youngest is that she’s not fundamentally opposed to food, just that she has an aversion to feeding herself. I can sit next to her and spoon an entire container of yogurt into her, or a full serving of Annie’s mac and cheese, or little bites of pizza, but if left with the food on a plate before her, the food never makes it into her mouth. Her arms just hang loosely at her sides, like they aren’t even a part of the eating process.

The funny thing is, when she was a baby, she hated being fed. She was a good nurser, loved snagging drinks out of her sister’s sippy cup of milk, but as soon as I got her into her high chair and put a bowl of mush in front of her, there was no way it was going down. She’d hit the spoon away, turn her head away, or just clamp her mouth shut. Back in those days, she preferred to feed herself. If I cut up pieces of fruit, cheese and made a pile of frozen peas on her plate, she’d happily browse the buffet, popping food into her mouth to gum down.

Now, she likes to stop by the kitchen during lunch to have a few bites of whatever sandwich her dad has made for lunch, or pause next to my salad bowl at dinner and ask me to feed her a piece of avocado, and she’ll even let her sister feed her with a fork (one of the cutest things to watch). But food sitting listlessly on a plate holds no appeal to her. Occasionally I’ll forget the new deal, that feeding her, almost two years after I quit trying, is now back in favor, and she’ll turn to me and say, “Mommy, will you feed me?” And the truth is, since I never got a chance to spoon-feed her as a baby, I don’t even mind. For now…