Retreat Farm Visit

Yesterday when I woke up, I decided it would be a great day to take a trip to Brattleboro, VT to visit Retreat Farm, an old farm that now has a great petting "zoo" for kids and adults alike. We hadn't been before but had heard such great reviews from friends that I've been wanting to go all summer.

The car ride wasn't too long, but Oliver disagreed and was slightly disgruntled, though he rallied when we reached our destination. Not sure what to expect, we put him right into the stroller and made our way to the barn. We soon discovered that Oliver prefers his farm animals to be in books, or in the form of plastic figures in his play barn at home. It was difficult to tell exactly how he felt about the animals. At times he seemed apprehensive or maybe scared. At other times he clearly wasn't afraid, he just didn't care about them. I find Oliver's behavior around animals to be kind of strange. We have a dog and 5 cats, yet he almost never even notices that they are there. Occasionally, when he is aware of them, he seems either fascinated or annoyed by them. He really likes to feed animals, and thinks it's funny to do so, but that seems to be about it. At the farm yesterday, he only touched the animals when I did hand-over-hand to help him pet them. He most enjoyed feeling the thick hairs of a pony's mane and feeding the giant ox.

In addition to the animals, Retreat Farm also has a great play area for kids wth ride-on tractor toys, a play farm stand with wooden play foods, many farm animal puzzles, blocks and other pretend toys, piles of clean hay and bedding with child-size rakes and shovels for them to play with, and an old silo with a big pile of dried corn kernals for kids to play in. Oliver liked the corn, but was more interested in going in and out of the silo than actually playing in the corn.

Oliver checked out the play area in about 30 seconds flat. He was sort of intrigued by the tools for a moment and he sat very briefly on one of the ride-on tractors, but that was it.

The play area was located along a fenced area of blacktop, so really, it didn't stand a chance of holding Oliver's attention. There is nothing this boy loves more than running free on pavement, waving his arms about. Sometimes he holds his arms a bit in front of him, thumbs to fingers as if he's holding something, and he moves his arms up and down as he runs. I've come to wonder if he could be pretending to steer something, though I have no idea how he would have any concept of that. Watching Oliver run on pavement is actually one of my favorite things to see him do. There aren't many areas where it is safe for him to do it, and we tend to discourage it since he can't differentiate between what is and is not safe, but when he is able, it's as if his spirit is soaring. I think he could just go and go and go for miles running like that, and he'd love every second of it.






Since we weren't able to occupy a whole lot of time with the animals or play spaces we decided we would try taking a walk on the hiking trail that starts at the farm. Surely Oliver would enjoy this since he could have some freedom to walk and run as he pleased. Wrong. First we couldn't find the start of the trail and Oliver grew more and more impatient as we walked back and forth looking for it. When we finally found it, and set him down so he could go on his own, he sat down screaming, refusing to get up. He grabbed at his shoes, so I went to investigate and saw that his feet were being pinched a little by his new shoes so I changed to his preferred sandals and thought, "Okay, here we go. He'll be ready now." And for a split second he was. He got up excitedly and took off for the start of the trail. But suddenly, as if he had just run into a brick wall, he stopped, sat down in the dirt and started screaming again. I could find nothing else wrong wth his shoes, or any other article of clothing. We picked him up and walked a bit further, hoping to entice him into the fun of the walk. I spotted some Jewel Weed and was able to get some good laughs by having him touch the very full pods so they'd "Pop!" in his face. We set him down for one more attempt at a walk, but he clung on like a monkey and screamed some more. We called it quits and headed for the car. We had packed a lunch, which we ate at a picnic table with only minor struggling to keep Oliver at the table. We loaded back into the car, me sitting in the back with Oliver to try to keep him happy, and hopefully get him napping. He drank his cup of milk and I rested my head on the arm of his car seat. He had two of his blankets bundled in his lap and while initially excited by my head on his seat, he quickly settled in and began pulling and stroking strands of my hair. He did this until we both drifted off to sleep.

Our friends were right about Retreat Farm. It is a wonderful place. A wonderful place for Oliver? Not so much right now, but overall we did enjoy our visist, and are glad we went. My favorite part of the visit was going into the "chick room" where you are able to pick up and hold baby chicks.

I could have sat on the bench in that room all day just watching and snuggling the chicks. At first I picked one up, kissed it's beak and then Ken pointed to a sign. "No kissing the chicks." Oops. Oliver preferred to just sit on the bench, watching the chicks from afar, though he did at one point venture over to a nesting box to peek in.

Almost all of the baby chicks in the room were yellow, but standing out from all the rest was one lone black chick. We had tried to show Oliver chick after chick but he did not want to see them, and pushed our hands away. When I brought him this one little black chick, his reaction was completely different. He looked right at him, smiled, and reached out to gently pet his head. I like to think that Oliver realized this chick was different from all the others. It's as if he was saying, "Hey chickie, you and me are kindred spirits. We're different from the rest of our friends. Different, but still the same."