Thrushing Day at Oliver Kelly Farm

Every year, we take the kids to Oliver Kelly Farm located in Elk River. It is free for kids ages five and under and they have so many fantastic things for children. First off, there are a lot of domesticated farm animals roaming around. Baby calves, baby pigs, kitties, chickens and sometimes they even let the oxen out!

Oliver Kelly Farm does all types of special events throughout the season. They are open April- October. We decided to go on the spur of the moment and ended up taking the kids there on Threshing day. This is when the wheat is harvested using old fashioned machinery. Logan absolutely loved watching the threshing machine which was powered by a horse on a treadmill.

The volunteers on the farm all dress up in period clothing and reenact what life was like during the late 1800's. They give out random facts and are very friendly! One of my favorite volunteers works in the kitchen of the farm house making food from the huge garden they have on the farm. She was making ketchup when we were there and it smelled absolutely delicious!

There are so many neat rooms you can explore at the farm house! Logan and Lily did their job and raced around to every room. Lily wanted to go upstairs which is off
limits. I, myself, am curious to see what it looks like up there and was tempted to step over the guard rail and go up. Of course, that would be setting a very bad example so I didn't. I hope they open up that space in the future, I would love to see what the bedrooms up there look like. There were no bathrooms back then, so I took Logan to the outhouse.

There is also a water pump in the middle of the yard that the children just love to play with! They have several wooden buckets you can use to fill up with water from the pump. Many times they do laundry the old fashioned way and fill up big barrels with the water and let the kids have a turn scrubbing the wash. They didn't do that this year, and instead the water went into a big mud hole that the piggies liked to lay in.

We explored the barn and Logan climbed up the ladder into the top part of the barn but was too afraid to pull himself up. Lily did it as well with a little help from mama. Of course, there were quite a few barn kitties hanging around and they both couldn't get enough of them. They just loved petting those kitties!

The chickens were also another source of amusement. Logan liked to provoke them by sticking his fingers in between the slats in the fence and then pulling them away before they pecked them. He kept wanting to go in the coop and figured out how to unlatch the door. It was hard to convince him that he wasn't actually allowed to go in there!


The day ended with us eating our snack on an old hay wagon after the kids literally took a roll in the hay! They played in the hay by jumping into it and rolling out for a good twenty minutes. After we had our snack, we saved the apple cores and gave them to the horses. Logan loved feeding the horse! Finally, we went home after a busy day on the farm.

I'm so glad we do this every year, and I think we will continue to do it until the kiddos get sick of it. It is inexpensive fun for a day and it teaches our children about time passed. I love that they have fun and learn too! Since we go every year, it is a real treat for me to look at the pictures from previous years and see how much my kids have grown!

By the way...Logan is going through his cowboy stage. That is why he is wearing a cowboy hat! :)