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KINGSTON TWP. — What can be better than a morning spent mucking out stalls?
Perhaps it might be getting a herd of cows up the hill to graze in a high pasture.
Or helping to give a sheep a de-worming vaccine.
And about 22 people got a chance to do all of those things Saturday at The Lands at Hillside Farms as part of the farm’s Adult Farm Camp.
It wasn’t for those who like to sleep in on weekends. The day began at 6 a.m. with a bit of orientation. Then everyone got to work under the guidance of the farmlands’ staff and volunteers who love their work.
“I used to be a teacher,” said Hillside’s director of education, Lindsey Sutton, of Hunlock Creek. “But this is much better. You just can’t snuggle a calf at a school.”
And the campers got to snuggle, scratch, mingle with and play with animals as well. That was mixed in with the gardening work, egg gathering and alpaca grooming.
There was milking too.
“I got to put the milking machine things on the udders and then clean them off with the iodine,” said Julie Schneggenburger, of Buffalo, New York.
Schneggenburger, who is a friend of Hillside’s board chairman, Dr. Doug Ayres, was a repeat visitor to the camp day, and she brought two or three friends with her to enjoy the experience.
One of those friends, Lauren Kaoczynski, also of Buffalo, helped to keep records during the sheep vaccinations – at first. But she jumped at the chance to get into the pen and help to hold one of the animals for its hoof-trimming and medication.
“It looked easy from outside, but it’s really different, more intense, once you actually get into the pen,” she said. “And I’m definitely going to come back and do this again.”
There was chicken feeding and a bit of egg-gathering.
“This definitely stretches you out of your comfort zone,” said Tanya Whitmoyer, of Dallas, who enjoyed time in the pen with the chickens and the big white turkey.
There was stall-mucking.
“We never mucked out stalls before, and we wanted to try it,” said Diane Devine, who was on hand with her daughter, Gayle Devine, and granddaughter, Cara Devine-Homza, all from the Lehman Township area. “Cara was really the one who wanted to come out here for the experience. But we all wanted to see, to do, to experience, to learn, to be inspired by the animals.”
There were the newbies like Libby Lynett, who lives just up the hill from the 400-acre property itself and whose husband, Scott, signed her up for the day-long experience.
“I’ve brought my children here a lot,” she said. “They have come to birthday parties here. And of course, we come for the ice cream. But this is the first time I’ve tried this camp thing.”
Lynett said her favorite part of the morning was turning out the animals in the carriage house.
There were those who simply wanted to spend a day doing something different from their usual jobs.
“Basically, I just wanted to spend a day on the farm,” said Kimberly Niezgoda, who normally spends her days as an administrator at Wilkes University.
And state Superior Court Judge Correale Stevens, who is no stranger to working in barns, having helped with horses when his daughter used to ride, said he was on hand “just to enjoy the day.”
It wasn’t all work, either. After the campers ate the lunches they’d brought, there was a ride around the 400-acre property to visit the free-range pigs on the “back 40” and to view the farm’s historical barns that date back to the Civil War. Dr. Ayres himself, in jeans and farm boots and looking very unlike the traditional chairman of the board, was on hand to help with animal wrangling, explaining about animal management and answering questions.
And the whole day finished with a grand dinner in the building known as “The Cottage.”
“When people think about Hillside, the first thing that comes to mind is ice cream,” said Suzanne Kapral Kelley, director of communications. “But it’s so much more. It’s a place to learn, it’s a place to experience. And most of all, it’s a place to where we are planting the seeds of respect for the earth and the animals we share it with.”
