Monkey on the Farm

The monkey continues his early education with a trip to a farm amongst a bunch of new farm workers AKA the first grade class of his #2 grand girl.  This trip was designed to reinforce classroom studies about botany and agriculture — like where does all that stuff in the grocery store come from anyway?

Naturally, no trip to the farm could be complete without a tractor ride.  Here the class boards a trailer for transportation to the fields where the real work begins.

Our group of future farmers was lead by real life farmer Goretta who drove the tractor, told us about the fruits and vegetables we would get to pick and how many we could stuff in our bags.

Some of the new farmers could not resist the opportunity to ham it up on the tractor ride.  after all, it IS first grade and these aspiring veggie queens just can’t pass up an opportunity to have fun!

Granddaughter scores a big golden beet in the fields.

The class, along with several chaperones like Kongo, dug into their work with gusto, picking beets, turnips, onions, and something the monkey can’t pronounce (kohlrabi).  Now Kongo doesn’t actually eat this stuff.  He is NOT a vegetable lover  (with few exceptions) so this was mostly an academic exercise for the simian that got sun on his face and dirt under his fingernails.

Several things were learned such as that age old question, what is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable.  Hmmm.  According to the farmer instructors the difference is that fruits have seeds like apples, pears, strawberries, and oranges.  Vegetables have flowers like artichokes, lettuce, and carrots.  Actually, fruits have flowers too but you don’t eat them.  With vegetables you eat the roots, leaves, and stems of the plant.  So there you go.  Tomatoes, peppers, squash, okra, and cucumbers are fruits.  So there!

Kongo surveys the pickings from the field trip and reflects that this outing really was a “field” trip.  Get it?

Travel safe.  Have fun.