All the Summer Stuff: Fun at the Farm

 FIRST, my periodic awkward answering of questions from comments because I still can't decide if I should answer them IN the comments, or it doesn't format properly, or whatever.

Questions by ANNE, the loveliest of commenters - YES, Eve's supervisor's wife is indeed pregnant for the SIXTH TIME, resulting in his sabbatical being postponed and Eve now being able to start her master's in the lab she loves in September. 

ALSO YES, Eve's shoes are Doc Marten Mary Janes, and they are GLORIOUS. She's out wearing them right now, but I will get a close-up when she gets home. 

Engie, thank-you for making me remember vividly the experience of watching television in Ontario and hearing a show announced for "Wednesday night at ten o'clock: ten-thirty in Newfoundland." Even though we all used to comment on it all the time, I don't think I've ever looked up what the reason was until now. It's not terribly exciting: "This time zone exists because of the location of the island and the fact that it was a separate dominion when time zones were established. Newfoundland lies squarely in the eastern half of the Atlantic Time Zone, with St. John's being exactly three-and-a-half hours from Greenwich."

You know when the kids are little and you're constantly on the lookout for fun ways to entertain them/ spend quality time with them/ not go insane? We live in the nation's capital, and while there are things that are profoundly disappointing about it - crappy, expensive public transit, an airport that doesn't let you fly direct, like, anywhere, a downtown with way too many one-way streets - there is a pretty good list of fun activities to do with your kid. Museums - Nature, History, Science and Tech, Children's, water parks, libraries, etc. 

Every now and then we think about places we used to go frequently with the kids that we haven't been back to since the kids were little. 

One of these places was the Experimental Farm, which adjoins the Ornamental Gardens and is across the street from the Arboretum. We went at least once every summer, and the kids both did summer camps there, which were amazing - they made ice cream and butter, hung around all the animals and got to adopt a cow to take care of. Angus's cow was named Tina. Eve got special permission to go into the row of cows where campers didn't usually go so she could take care of a cow named Eve.

Eve's housemate Zoe also lives in Ottawa. Until this summer they had never hung out together IN Ottawa, because they lived together during the school year and there was no urgency. Then they all graduated and moved out of the house and so they've been spending time together in their home city. Zoe lives within biking distance of the farm and arboretum, and according to Eve, Zoe and her boyfriend spent Covid lockdown wandering around the arboretum learning about trees: her exact phrasing was "they were literally spending every day in a tree museum while I was on Animal Crossing". (Are we bad parents? No, Zoe's parents are just a little bit better, maybe?)

Their friend came up from Toronto to visit, and with Zoe and her boyfriend they literally carried a canoe to the canal and paddled downtown (yes, rest assured I am feeling more bougie by the second). We literally OWN a canoe, but we took it out a couple of times when Angus was little, and then once we were at the river landing and Angus tried to kick a soccer ball and slipped on it and broke his femur when I was four months pregnant with Eve. I think the trauma of that coupled with, I don't know, having kids and being really busy for the next twenty years scarred us for life. I mean, we have been in a canoe since, just not our own.)

Ridiculously wholesome, or what?

We had to find her a shirt from Matt's closet because she couldn't figure out a canoeing-appropriate outfit.

After talking about all of this, we decided we needed to go back to the Experimental Farm, which Eve could barely remember. So we packed a picnic and picked up Zoe. As we were driving there Eve said "Experimental Farm makes it sound like they produce mutant animals." Zoe assured her that the experiments were all done on plants.

We saw the cows

We saw the pigs, which were very clean and knew how to drink from a straw!

I know I've seen sheep before. And yet walking into the sheep barn, I heard a sheep baaa-ing and I could have sworn it was a man trying to sound like a sheep. When my eyes adjusted I saw that there was only a woman and a child, and then the sheep vocalized again and Eve agreed it absolutely sounded fake.

But they were really cute.

Eve developed a deep and meaningful relationship with this outside sheep, and a black alpaca.

When we were outside, we read this information billboard which revealed that three Arcott sheep breeds were developed at the farm, which vindicated Eve on her suspicion of animal experimentation.

They needed very little encouragement to climb up into the tractor and play the planting game.

"Do you think call everyone Master Farmer?" Eve said. I said "no, I watched the kids before you lose and their dad said 'let's go, you're all terrible farmers'."

Basically it had most of the enjoyable parts of taking your kids to the farm, without the drawbacks of worrying about losing them or reminding them to wear their hats or asking them if they had to pee a dozen times.

We walked down to the arboretum and had a picnic.

We walked back up and through the ornamental gardens.