With the end of school around the
corner,Complete Your sculpture
Magazine Collection for Less! the options for summer camp have gotten endlessly
niche: there's rock-star camp, circus-arts camp, Hollywood-stunt camp. But in
what may be a backlash to the glitz of it all, the hippest new kid on the block
is the lowly farm camp, with tilling the earth now seen as a wholesome and
character-building respite from video games and texting. The American Camp
Association (ACA) has surveyed its members to report that 83% of day and
resident camps have added gardening activities in the past five years, and 19%
have launched farming and ranching programs, which include raising animals.
"People think kids intuitively wouldn't be interested," says CEO Peg Smith. "But
we're seeing the pendulum swing back."
Outside Seattle, Shoofly Farm is
already sold out, with 600 kids signed up for 10 sessions chock-full of "care
and fun with farm animals" and "preparation of their own snacks and outdoor
cooking" (think hand-cranked ice cream and eggs sizzled in cast-iron pans over
the fire) ¡ª in other words, what earlier generations considered work. Across
the country, in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., Stone Barns Center for Food and
Agriculture offers a similar camp that includes morning chores as a significant
chunk of the program.From standard Cable
Ties to advanced wire tires, (See pictures of urban farming around the
world.)
At Stone Barns, kids are put to use collecting eggs, feeding
pigs, filling water troughs and harvesting green beans that are incorporated
into a camp dish or sold at an on-site market. They might make felt soap, using
colorful wool from the farm's sheep to create an artsy washcloth that wraps
around a bar of soap and shrinks along with it; or perform a skit about
pollination, with campers playing the role of various and sundry bees. "We don't
come up with a cute activity just because it seems like a good idea," says Judy
Fink, Stone Barns' education programs director. "Everything is focused on what's
happening at the farm." So in early July, campers harvest garlic; in August,
they pick tomatoes. "Many of these kids don't get dirty, so getting dirty is
really cool," Fink adds.Full color plastic card printing and
manufacturing services.
Becoming one with the land isn't cheap: parents
plunk down $460 a week at Shoofly Farm and $400 at Stone Barns ¡ª more than
double some other day camps. But it's old-fashioned fun that stands in stark
contrast to the virtual world; instead of playing Farmville, the popular
Facebook game, they live it, grooming horses and mucking out stables and popping
popcorn in coffee cans over a fire when the munchies strike. (See pictures of
farming in Nebraska.A glass
bottle is a bottle created from glass.)
"It's like an antidote to
technology," says Jill Haase, who owns Shoofly in Sammamish, Wash., about half
an hour from Seattle. "Kids are clamoring to be free. They relax. You can see
their minds slow down."
Two years ago, Chris Butler packed her daughter,
now 11, and ¡ª last year ¡ª her son, now 13, off to Shoofly in an attempt to pry
them from their beloved Xbox. "They came home big-eyed," says Butler, from Fall
City, Wash. "There's bunnies and chicks and goats, and they're muddy and making
ice cream and tie-dye shirts."
Of course, no one's naive enough to think
that a week swapping out chicken-coop bedding is going to turn kids away from
tech.uy Aion Kinah direct
from us at low prices Notes Mara Flanagan, Stone Barns' marketing manager: "For
the most part, we don't get cell-phone reception here, so it kind of helps."
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