With A.J.’s charter school, we were able to take a free  field trip to Centennial Farms.  This is a very cool place to take the kids, and I want to go back when we will have more time to explore.  There’s just so much to learn on a farm!

I learned a lot about oxen on this day.  For instance, I had no idea that oxen were not born oxen, but regular old cows and/or bulls.  The only thing that makes a cow or bull an “ox” is being trained to work like one!  Seriously, I had no idea.  Am I the only one out there who thought oxen were bred from other oxen, a breed of it’s own?  It ain’t so!   The two oxen in the background in this photo were used in the demonstration.  You can’t tell from this photo, but they are HUGE!  Well, I guess you can tell, if you compare the people standing next to them to.  That lady there handles these oxen everyday, and they are taller than her!

Aria stands very close to the two oxen for a photo.  It actually made me a bit nervous to take this photo, because I kept thinking, what if something spooks them and they charge forward out of instinct?  I’d never forgive myself for putting my baby in harms way just for a photo op!  See that wooden bar across their necks?  That’s called a yoke.  I have always heard that word but I never knew what it meant or what it was!  (okay, seriously people, I learn just as much as my kids while doing the homeschooling thing!  Don’t  think for a minute that I’m teaching THEM.  It’s more true that we are learning together!)  Anyway, it’s that yoke that keeps the oxen working together, in sync, as a team.  One  ox can pull about 10,000 pounds.  But together? Together they can pull a little over 20,000 pounds.  Isn’t that amazing?  Oh yea, and each one weighs about 6,000 pounds.  Those animals are BIG.  It makes me a bit sad that ANY cow can be made/trained to be a powerful ox, where they work the land and are so important to farmers, and are allowed to live well into their old age.   But most  cows are destined to stand in a dairy stall  and are milked, milked, milked all day and night.  And the others?  Well…we all know what happens to the others.

A.J. and Aria wanted to stand next to these bigger-than-life posters.  A.J. thought it was pretty funny that he was as tall as the SUPER CHICKEN!  Ahhhhhh!