Howell Living Museum Farm

The day before Easter we visited Howell Living Museum, a real-life functioning farm from the early 1900's, where you can see demonstrations by people dressed in character. We came on Egg Collecting and Grading day, and the girls had the opportunity to collect eggs from the hen house and grade them! Lindsay has been before on a school field trip, but it was the first visit for the rest of the family. We are totally going back again for some other upcoming demonstrations... maple sugaring, hog weighing (because who doesn't want to know how to weigh a hog?), and ice harvesting (no seriously, looks really cool!). 

 Sheep! One of the demonstrations in May is sheep shearing. You can buy the wool they spun into yarn in the gift shop. The girls had a fit over the baby lambs. There was a black on and a white one, and they were baa-ing. What a fitting reminder to see the lambs the day before we celebrated the resurrection of the Lamb of God :)

 Daddy and Maddie Girl. She stayed far away from those geese.

 My Little House on the Prairie heart leaped for joy when I saw they had a water pump. I had fun explaining how they used to get water, and Lindsay had fun taking a turn pumping. She said, "This is hard work!"

 Little Man was unimpressed, and napped while we visited the farm :)

 Daddy and his Baby Chicks! Lindsay's kindergarten class had just watched baby chicks hatch from eggs last week, and she loved sharing everything she learned with us!

Baby Chicks!

 Inside the hen house the girls and I saw the roost and boxes where they lay eggs.

The girls were a little hesitant to dig around underneath a hen who was occupying the box to get an egg. They would spread their wings out suddenly and startle the visitors to their hen house. Madison kept asking me, "Are they mad we are taking their eggs?" LOL.

The look of success! Her egg was warm!

 Did you know you don't have to refrigerate an egg that has just been laid? It doesn't have to go in the fridge until you wash it, and take off the protective coating?!

Proud of their hand-picked eggs. 

 Now was time for the grading process for their eggs...

 They weighed them on the scale...

 Then "candled" them, looking at them under a lighted candle to check for imperfections. Made sure they weren't "bad" eggs. LOL. This precious old gentleman talked our ear off and told us his family owned a chicken farm a few miles away for over 50 years.

 Our resident horse-lover, Madison wanted so badly to pet the horses. They were work horses though, and were getting ready to plow later in the day.

Pretty like a postcard!

 Madison did get to pet a steer, and was somewhat okay with that.

 Sweet Bubs woke up from his nap and was all smiles. He enjoyed watching the geese wander around the farm.

We bought some maple syrup in the gift shop and it was yummy! The Fisher's will definitely be going back to visit the farm again!!