" Sure, even a
preschooler knows that hens lay eggs.
But, does your 10-year-old really understand that
the plateful Mom serves for breakfast doesn't start out in the Styrofoam carton
at Giant Eagle?
One short trip to Washington County's Weatherbury
Farm in Independence is an instant lesson in the connection between the bounty
of the table and the bounty of the land.
Proprietors Marcy Tudor and her husband, 'Farmer
Dale,' are making it their business to give city-slicked kids a taste of
authentic farm life.
And they're not the only ones.
According to the Pennsylvania Farm Vacation
Association, 26 family farms across the state are playing host to visitors. Some
raise sheep, others have dairy cows. Some are home to ostriches and peacocks,
while others have beef cattle. Some offer horseback riding, others provide
fishing and hiking.
All are marketing a smattering of rural charm
with their hearty breakfasts and a chance for kids -- and parents, if they like
-- to get their hands dirty with more than just the dust from a soccer field or
the sweat from a ball bat.
Call it the Northeast's answer to the Western
dude ranch.
'What we all have in common is that we're
offering to people an experience that's getting harder and harder to find,' said
Kathy Allen, who, with her husband, John, owns Armstrong Farms Bed & Breakfast
in Clinton, Butler County.
'Not too many years ago, everybody either grew up
on a farm or had grandparents or an aunt and uncle who lived on a farm. Well,
those family farms don't exist anymore, but the Pennsylvania Farm Vacation is
allowing people to have the experience.'
From the weathered wooden boards of the 1850s
farmhouse to the rusted hand pump outside the old ice house, Weatherbury Farm's
unvarnished beauty and no-frills functionality is an immediate transport to a
slower time, a quieter place.
These are not the manicured lawns and brightly
painted outbuildings of Amish country.
As Marcy Tudor puts it, Weatherbury is a working
beef cattle farm and definitely not a Disney resort.
A recent visit there found all six sleeping
quarters filled with visitors from as far away as Wisconsin and as close as
Pittsburgh's Shadyside neighborhood. Named after the village in Thomas Hardy's
novel "Far from the Madding Crowd," it was the Tudors' subtle way of emphasizing
the great divide between farm and city, though it's only 20 miles from
Pittsburgh.
The day here begins with farm chores, and
everybody is invited to pitch in after they've indulged in a hearty breakfast
served in an old livery that was transported piece by piece in 1997 to
Weatherbury from a farm in Washington, Pa.
One of the chores is collecting eggs from the
henhouse, where the kids also get to hold the next generation of laying hens.
Then there's the bottle-feeding of sheep and the feeding of goats, who eat corn
kernels from the children's hands. The rabbits, geese, ducks and guinea fowl
that run loose -- plus two dozen cats that include a quad of weeks-old kittens
-- need attention, too.
When chores are done, guests can take long walks
in the pasture aside a field of cultivated hay with charming vistas in each
direction. The backdrop to it all: the low-slung moo of the cattle grazing on
the hillside outside the livery, the bleating of goats, the squawking of fowl.
Children who stay two or more nights are
encouraged to complete an educational coloring and activity book about farming
and farm life. In exchange, each child is named an "Official Weatherbury Farm
Kid" and is given a certification verifying the same.
Marcy Tudor said the idea of a farm vacation
business had its roots in the couple's experience with bed-and-breakfasts in
Germany, where her husband was on assignment for Bayer in 1980 and '81.
A decade later, they moved to the farm and now
raise Hereford and Scottish Highland cattle and grow a mix of timothy grass,
clover and alfalfa on 50 acres of the 100-acre spread.
' We just love the lifestyle,' said Dale Tudor,
who was raised on a farm.
It's the same for Kathy Allen, co-owner of
Armstrong Farms. Her three children are the sixth generation to live on the
cattle farm. While it is a lucrative, thriving business, she said she decided to
open her spread to visitors in 1996 as an antidote to the empty-nest syndrome
following her youngest son's departure for college.
Nature is the emphasis for the visitor to
Armstrong Farms, where miles of walking trails traverse the property, three
fishing ponds are stocked with bass and trout, and ducks and cats and goats
roam. A main attraction for the children who visit are the dozens of calves on
the property. ' They help us feed them and tag them and have even helped deliver
some,' Allen said.
She enjoys knowing that for many kids, it will be
their only firsthand experience with a farm and the work that goes into running
one.
Jim Eriser believes he's doing God's work in
giving families an opportunity to experience the serenity of nature. Eriser
helps his wife, Juanita Martin, with their farm, Ber-Nita Acres, in Beaver
County.
' We're an opportunity for people to appreciate
nature, away from the hubbub of city and suburban life. They get to see up close
some of the gifts God has given us, whether they choose to take advantage of
them or not,' Eriser said.
The 92-acre farm in North Sewickley is home to
ostriches, beef cattle, sheep, peacocks, ducks and geese and sports two large
ponds suitable for fishing and paddle and row boating. It's been a three-room
bed-and-breakfast for six years, though Martin had farmed the land for 42.
Eriser said children are delighted to feed the
fowl that roam free on his property and collect their feathers. And he delights
in watching them come face-to-face with nature.
' We get a lot out of it, too,' he said.
Judy Davis said the families who visit her
166-acre farm just outside Westmoreland County near Blairsville are ' awestruck
' by the amount of work it takes to raise her standard-bred race horses and to
maintain her menagerie of goats, alpacas, ducks and geese.
' It's morning to night, seven days a week. Kids
from the city and the suburbs don't get that,' said Davis, owner of Jed's B&B
Farmhouse and Cabin by the Woods.
She said she has been moved by the interest and
passion of children who visit, recalling in particular a group of youngsters,
all 10 years old or younger, who visited her farm and plied her with intelligent
questions about the operations there.
' It's clear when they come here they're
responding to something deep inside themselves that's being brought to the
surface by the experience of being out here, away from it all,' said Davis, who
has operated the farm vacation spot since 1989.
Visitors wander through the barn and
outbuildings, feed the animals, fish the pond and experience firsthand the peace
of country living, she said.
' People just don't get this experience in their
day-to-day lives anymore,' Davis said. ' They have to seek it out. And when they
do, I think they're amazed at what they find.' "
