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On visit to Munnell Run Farm, kids learn home-grown lessons
By jeanne starmack
mercer, pa.
Six-year-old Evelyn Dickinson munched contentedly on her saltine cracker at a table in a building called “the pig barn” at Munnell Run Farm.
The barn featured a large, airy room with tables and chairs big enough only for the pint-sized crowd that was there Wednesday morning, and there were no actual pigs in sight.
There was something missing from Evelyn’s cracker, too. Butter. Everyone else had it on their crackers. But she wouldn’t touch the stuff — even though she’d made it herself.
“She doesn’t like butter,” said her mother, Jodi. Evelyn’s sister Madison, 9, who was two seats away, chowed down on her freshly made butter. She’ll make it at the family’s New Wilmington home, she said.
“Tasty, good, creamy!” Madison proclaimed. Evelyn appeared unimpressed.
In front of the room, Bob McDonald, a technician with the Mercer County Conservation District, received jars from little hands and unscrewed the lids to reveal mounds of butter that the kids had made by shaking heavy cream with all their might. Some adults had helped.
McDonald plopped each blob of butter into a bowl and pressed it with a wooden spatula until all the liquid was squeezed out.
So with hands-on enthusiasm, these 10 kids who joined up for the Conservation District’s “Down on the Farm” preschool program at county-owned Munnell Run learned just how important milk is not only for drinking, but also for making other tasty foods: butter, cheese, ice cream and yogurt.
Before their butter- making lesson, they’d milked “Clara,” a simulated cow.
They soon would be taking a wagon ride out through the fields, and they’d wind up their visit with a look at the farm’s trout hatchery.
The preschool program is just one of many programs the Conservation District offers at Munnell Run.
There are programs listed on munnellrunfarm.org for all age groups of schoolchildren, for adults and for community groups.
“If your children want to learn about agriculture or the outdoors, this is the place it’s happening,” said Chris Moseboch, environmental educator for the Conservation District.
Moseboch is also an impromptu lyricist, leading the kids in a spirited verse of “Old Man Munnell had a grasshopper, e-i-e-o,” after the kids spotted one on Krista Resek’s knee during the wagon ride.
Resek, of Fredonia, was enjoying the ride with her two sons, Casey, 4, and Aiden, 2.
For Gary and Ellie Powell of Brookfield, the morning was a way to spend time with their granddaughter, Delaney Schultz, 5, of Masury.
“We thought it would be a nice outing,” said Ellie. “We live in suburbia. Let her know where her yogurt and cheese come from.”