Visiting a Farm is a Joy You Never Outgrow

The Boston Globe

My family teases me about how much I love Davis Farmland. I visited for the first time in 2009 and I haven't stopped talking about it since. It's not a big theme park like Canobie Lake. It's a modest attraction in Sterling, a town I'd never heard of until nine years ago. It's old-fashioned, the kind of place that exists mostly in memory or in old movie footage. You have to be accompanied by a child 12 or under to get in and every family gets a matching wristband, which is checked on the way out and there's only one way out, so all the time you're there you know your child is safe.

My granddaughter Lucy was 6 when we first took her. She wandered free among baby goats. She held them. She fed them and she fed cows and sheep and llamas and rode a pony, which was just the right size for her, and she went on a hayride and listened to a man talk about snakes. Then she touched a snake.

In the fall, there's even more to do. Across the parking lot, outside of the animal park, there's apple picking and a pumpkin patch, and across the street there's Davis Mega Maze, a giant maze that wends its way for nearly 3 miles through 8 acres of corn. And there's a zip line, too, 200 feet long and three stories high, plus different music festivals, open on weekends all fall.

Lucy and I never did these older kid things. We stuck to the little kid stuff, feeding the animals, playing in the small houses set up for pretend games, face-painting stars and flowers on our cheeks. Until she outgrew all these things. And left me in the dust.

Because I haven't outgrown them. Now, sometimes, if I promise her an ice cream, she'll hang out with me at Ward's Berry Farm in Sharon. It's a lot closer, just a 10-minute drive away, it's open all year long, and there's no entrance fee because it isn't an attraction with pony rides and staged shows. It's just a small farm with a small barn and a small store.

But there are cows there sometimes, and goats and rabbits always, and the barn is open every day, and for just a $1 donation, which supports Sunny Rock 4-H Club, which is responsible for the barn, anyone can feed the animals.

Lucy still likes to feed the animals.

Every fall here there are pumpkin hayrides, no reservations required. The ride drops you off in a pumpkin patch where you get to wander and choose your favorite. There's a giant hay pyramid for climbing, a playground, swings. When the younger grandchildren are in town, they beg to go.

My favorite part of this little treasure is its store. It smells of blueberries and peaches and strawberries even when the picking season has passed. The corn grown there? It needs no sugar, no salt, no butter. If Emily Dickinson were alive, she would write a poem about it.

As promised, Lucy and I always end our time at Ward's Berry Farm with ice cream. Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles for her, chocolate with chocolate sprinkles for me. In summer, we eat outside on the patio. In winter we sit at the small tables inside. Fall is our favorite time because it's neither too hot nor too cold. We always go home with something: tomatoes, sunflowers, freshly baked pie, or bread.

We go to farms to feed the animals. That's what I tell myself. But in so many different ways farms, with their earthy smells and bleating sounds, with their rows of corn and fields of pumpkins, with their wide sky and open spaces, with their beauty, end up feeding us.