Cows, Car Rides and Cheese

This weekend we decided to drive up the island for a mini-getaway. A stay-cation if you will. We are on a tight budget these days so I did my best to stretch our dollar on this trip. It was a bit stressful but definitely fun. Poor F had a hard time in the car this trip so we had to make lots of stops. It was raining for most of the drive so we didn't visit the beaches as I hoped we could. We did, however, make a stop to one of my favorite farms. Farms are a fantastic, free way to have fun and learn about your local farms and food.

Little Qualicum Cheeseworks and Morningstar Farm is such a fun place to visit. Not only are their cheeses amazing, it's such a great learning opportunity to see exactly where our food comes from. It was still drizzling when we arrived but we took cover in the animal pens. Both kids adored the rabbits. You could tell they were used to visitors because they barely batted an eyelash at all the scratching and stroking.

We visited the calves (oh my they were sweet!), donkeys, sheep, ducks and most importantly the cows. The kids got to visit the maternity pens and give those girls some scratches. Then we took a look at the milking pen. No one was in there at the time but A and I checked out the equipment and talked about how it must work when the pen is full of cows. Then we walked over to the cheesemaking window. "1/2 of excitement packed into 8 hours" as we've made our own cheese before we completely understood this sentiment. Of course the way to finish a tour of a cheeseworks factory is to taste the cheese (my favorite part). We couldn't leave without taking some of our favorite cheese home.

As we were leaving F noticed a tractor. He is a boy obsessed with driving. We could hardly convince him to leave. I think he would have liked to sat on that seat until sheer will brought the thing to life. While he was "driving", A spotted a horse. She tells me often that horses are her favorite animal. It was a gentle horse and happily visited with us. Eventually we bid farewell to the farm and got back in the car to continue our journey.