Barnyard of Doom

I spent my afternoon rocking catatonically in the corner after barely surviving L’s preschool field trip to a farm.   I was matched up with a group of two other moms and together we were in charge of eight five year-olds.  Can you say BIRTH CONTROL?

Normally, a farmyard visit would be uneventful.  I have taken my girls to farms millions of times, but never have I feared they wouldn’t survive to return home that night.  Not so with the preschool field trip.  In this trip, survival for the children was questionable.  In addition to providing thousands of cowpies hidden into, around and inside smushy mudpuddles for children to stomp in, the organic farm also provided Death’s own playground.

I started to get nervous when we discovered the electric fences that ran all over the farm were still on.  You could hear them snapping and popping.  Trying to shepherd eight hyped up preschoolers down a 15 foot wide path with electric fences on both sides is not something I ever want to experience again.   The old guy who was showing us around helpfully noted that “Electric fences have a steep learning curve.  You only touch it once, then you learn you don’t want to touch it again.” Thanks old dude, but I don’t think these kids parents signed an electrocution waiver.

We managed to avoid losing life and limb on the fences long enough to eat lunch.  I don’t know what kind of lunches those parents packed, but I am guessing they all included sugar.  Or caffeine.  Or Meth.  Because after lunch, the eight kids were bouncing off the walls, just in time to take them up to the hay loft.

This particular hay loft had very, very steep steps.   And a rather rickety board for a handrail, which none of the kids wanted to use.  They wanted to hang on my body so I could drag them up the stairs, except they were too hyper to stop jumping while I was dragging them.  It was precarious, to say the least.

When we got to the top of the stairs, we discovered the “railing” along the edge of the loft was a small board.  The board right around preschooler head level–No vertical boards below it –as in providing no protection to the children who were climbing all over the hay bails and randomly bolting towards the edge/trying to chase each other/ jumping around wildly/ thrashing around yelling complaints and basically acting like maniacs who wanted to plunge to their death in the goat stalls below.  The other moms and I had to form a human shield to keep them away from the edge.   Our guide said “Wow, I usually let the kids go near the edge and look down at the goats, but these kids seem a little too wild to try that.”  You think, old dude??

After we managed to get them down the stairs of doom, we went  back past all the electric fences (narrowly avoiding death yet again) to the pond.  You know what preschoolers think when they see a pond?  They think it is a giant puddle  to jump in.  You know what is a bad idea? 8 maniacal preschoolers running and jumping around a large, slippery, muddy/opaque body of water. Exactly how far into the water can you go without technically being “in” the water, there were many strategies to learn the answer to that question. Not all strategies were unsuccessful.

Then the old dude upped the ante by inviting the kids onto a slippery floating dock with no railings…but not until he showed them how it lurches if you jump on it.  Of course that is what they did, narrowly avoiding slipping in their muddy/cowpie covered boots into a watery grave by hanging on my arms and nearly knocking me over repeatedly.

We also managed to survive a walk along a cliff, a near run-in with a patch of poison ivy and a path where the only dandelions to be found were located where? You guessed it, right beside the electric fence.

By the time we got back on the bus, I vowed to never have more children AND to never go to another organic farm with children again.