KINGSTON TOWNSHIP — There are summer camps for kids underway all over our area but at one camp, kids are being put to work.
The boys and girls are learning to do chores around a farm in Luzerne County, and a lot more.
Some of these boys and girls may have taken their dog for a walk but a goat? That’s a new experience.
So is playing around with a 5-week-old baby bull. This is farm camp at the Lands at Hillside Farms near Shavertown.
“It’s really fun!” said Ben Carron of Moosic.
Getting to play with the animals at the farm is a lot of fun, but farm camp is about a lot more than that. It’s about learning.
“Any child that takes an interest in the natural world around them will find something here,” said camp director Julie Fallon.
Not only are the kids playing with Max the bull, they’re learning about him.
“He’s a jersey bull. His mother was a jersey cow,” Fallon explained to the children.
The goats were fun to take on a walk but a milking mama taught a lesson, too.
“Well, they were both trying to get milk from their mom,” said Eliana Parra of Wyoming. “And it wasn’t really working because there are two of them, but there are two udders so it kind of worked.”
Hillside Farms is all about teaching people where their food comes from and how to protect the world that provides for us.
In seven week-long camps this summer, the kids are learning that first hand.
“We come in, we do our chores in the barn. Today we went in the creek,” Parra said.
They learn farming can be hard work but their chores apparently don’t include every job on the farm.
“I really wanted to pick up cow poop, but I didn’t get to,” said Casey O’Brien of Moosic.
But the rest of life on the farm is keeping them busy.
“All of our parents tell us how well they sleep at night and they always tell us they come home so tired at night and they love it,” said camp counselor Casey Brelsford.
“We’re giving them a connection to their food, their environment and in the meantime they’re having more fun that we could imagine,” Fallon said.
And there are still some openings for the weeks to come.
