<h1 class="entry-title"><font size="5">Summer Vacation at The Farm on Blue Mountain {Travel}</font></h1>

The Zoo's summer vacation started in early August at "The Farm" located at the top of Blue Mountain (just outside Collingwood, ON).

My parents bought the 1880's Farm in 1968. Not because they necessarily wanted a 100 acre functioning farm but because the piece of land that they got with their Devils Glen Ski Membership ($500 for a membership and plot of land at the hill) was full of quick sand.

Years later, my Uncle (Dad's Brother) bought the farm next door (not "bought the farm") and then married the daughter of the man that owned the property to the back of us. When you include the farm that my Uncle has since bought across the road, that makes 450 acres of fun for the whole Zoo!

My uncle is a full-time farmer with a bunch of beef cattle (at least 40 cows?) so there's never a shortage of chores, especially during the summer and The Zoo loves helping out.

Riding the wagon collecting square bales and then loading them into the barn, bottle feeding one of three sets of twin calves born (The Cow would only care for one), helping deliver calves, drive around turning off electric fences during storms, and the list goes on. Note that we may or may not have done any of these chores.

What we definitely did was: Ate Poppa's birthday cake, ate cheese curds till the cows came home, hung out in the tent with Aunt Sally.

Played in the huge sandbox that Poppa built, swung on the swing-set, playing on the jungle gym, rode on our tricycles and that was only the first day.

Oh to be two years old again.

But, they (and Uncle Kevin) spent most of their time on their newest toy... a Trampoline.

We knew that it would be a success because, the week before, we'd been in New York State visiting friends and they had the exact same one and the kids loved it!

After the fairly quick and easy installation, we made sure to implement some safety rules and let the fun begin. I never thought to read the 3,890 page pamphlet on all the things that you weren't supposed to do. Unknowingly, we may or may not have broken all some of the safety recommendations.

Thankfully, our story ends there but the day I got home, I spoke with my girlfriend and she told me how her child had been injured just that week while on a trampoline and we read other newspaper articles like this one from CBC News. Gulp.

After a two week visit, we came back to Ottawa to rest up and prepare for the second leg of our summer vacation...

Taylor Statten Camps on Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, ON

  Besos, The Zoo