Dylan went on yet another field trip, this time to Ranch Day at Wilder Ranch. He was still not feeling 100% (poor guy), but we went anyway. For this one, the kids got to gear up in old-timey clothes and do some old-timey chores. They washed clothes in wash basins, sent them through the wringer and hung ’em on clotheslines, milked fake cows, took a hay ride, did some blacksmithing, played some old-timey kids games (bubbles, stilts, wooden horsey things, hoop rolling, and jumprope) and helped make soup, cornbread and molasses cookies for lunch (I’d heard about the field trip from other moms with kids at other schools so I knew about the cornbread and we made a batch in advance for Dylan–the soup was vegan, but with so many unwashed hands cutting the veggies and prepping the food, I wasn’t eager to eat it!).
Oh yeah, and they ground corn for chicken feed.
Maya was actually in a different group, but we saw her at snack time and I managed to get a picture of the two of them together.
The hayride took us out to where the kids fed alfalfa to the horses. We live in such a beautiful place and, although it was a little windy that day, it was still gorgeous out there.
The Wilders sold dairy–premium butter, actually–for a dollar a pound (pretty pricey back in the mid-1800’s when the plebes bought butter for just 25 cents a pound!) and shipped it directly to San Francisco from boats they harbored right there at the beach!
Here’s Dylan shaping a piece of iron into a shape…he later won a class raffle and got to take it home!
He also got to crank a drill bit into a piece of wood…Clearly he is not so much into “hard” work.
Wilder’s son studied electrical engineering at Stanford, so while this workshop was mostly powered by a pretty powerful water-powered belt and gears system, the Wilders were pretty proud of the fact that they actually had a working generator and this thing in the picture above (which I’ve now forgotten).
Overall, it was one of the best field trips ever. It’s too bad Dylan was still feeling low-energy!!
