One day, like every day, I was hurrying to cook dinner. \u00a0My then four-year-old daughter skipped in from outside and announced, \u201cFence likes to hide in the white cabinet.\u201d \u00a0You need to know that Fence is the name of her favorite chicken (the reason for the name is another story). \u00a0I responded the way I always do when I\u2019m distracted on the franch and not really listening to my children, \u201cWow, that\u2019s interesting.\u201d \u00a0I began to chop the cucumbers for the salad and requested that she set the table. \u00a0 Once finished with her chore, ten minutes later, she immediately asked to be excused to go back to playing her game. \u00a0\u201cWhat game are you playing?\u201d I asked finally giving her my full attention. \u00a0She explained matter-of-factly that it\u2019s a game of hide-n-seek and the chicken had chosen a good place to hide. \u00a0Her earlier words started to make sense. \u00a0\u201cShow me!\u201d \u00a0She led me out to the garage and opened the white cabinet with all the sporting equipment. \u00a0Hilarious! \u00a0Fence was indeed inside\u00a0and\u00a0seemed very relieved\u00a0to be found. \u00a0I don\u2019t know why that surprised me as much as it did. \u00a0Our children have developed very strong and meaningful relationships with their farm animals. \u00a0Life on the franch is quite busy, so sometimes scheduling time with the children\u2019s human friends gets postponed. \u00a0When that happens, it makes me feel better knowing there are some real benefits of having friendships with farm animals. \u00a0I will only name a few. \u00a0First, it warms a mother\u2019s heart so see how happy the animals are to see the children. \u00a0All the animals come running when our children head out to the barn (even when it isn’t around feeding time). \u00a0Secondly, farm friends have a positive influence on the\u00a0self-esteem of our children. \u00a0Our children do not feel judged by the animals in any way\u00a0for who they are or the way they look. \u00a0Third, I don\u2019t have to worry about my children running with the wrong crowd or negative peer pressure. \u00a0Even though there is a chicken posse on our franch, the worst they do is trespass in the garden and ruin plants with their aggressive pecking and scratching feet. \u00a0Our children usually do not\u00a0play games of “copy me” where the animals choose the action to be imitated. \u00a0So, they learn to be confident in their choice to not always do what\u00a0their friends\u00a0are doing. \u00a0A fourth benefit\u00a0is that our children\u00a0almost daily\u00a0hone their shepherding skills. \u00a0Our children are always in the lead of\u00a0any sort of\u00a0follow-the-leader game with the sheep and goats. \u00a0Our\u00a0children also get a lot of exercise chasing the chickens who\u2019d rather play a game of “you-can\u2019t-catch-me” instead of going into the coop on their own in the evenings. \u00a0Yet another benefit of farm friendships is that the silly antics of farm friends are always making them laugh. \u00a0And lastly, a game of hide-n-seek never ends in tears as the farm friend is always easily found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One day, like every day, I was hurrying to cook dinner. \u00a0My then four-year-old daughter skipped in from outside and announced, \u201cFence likes to hide in the white cabinet.\u201d \u00a0You need to know that Fence is the name of her favorite chicken (the reason for the name is another story). \u00a0I responded the way I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}