Fab day!

We took Little Missy to Smithills farm today.  It was great!  We started with a donkey ride - well when I say we, you understand just LM!  She loved it! Then she wanted to go in the children's play area, we fed the young deer: so lovely in their spotted coats!  After which we had lunch in the sun!  Only a few drops of rain had us scuttling indoors to eat on much cleaner tables!   Then it was a blow up castle sort of thing that ended in a big slide.  She loved this and had numerous goes.  

Meanwhile I went off to look at the modern cow shed.  A huge place where the cows are left to choose when they want to get milked!  They just walk into this little pen and eat pellets of some sort while a machine goes under them and milks them, then they walk out through a foot bath that is good for the feet and go back with their mates.  Amazing! 
There is a little robot " R2 clean poo" that goes all round the place cleaning!

By the time I joined the other two LM had very wet stockings from the plastic blown up thingy so we ended up in the cleaning hands place to put her feet under the blower!  They are really hot on cleaning hands when you have touched the animals and there are toilets and loads of kids height sinks etc!
The petting corner came next and it was there that we sat next to a nursery friend of LM's.  A really charming young mum with her two girls.  We got on really well.  The girls loved all the animals - feeding the 4 month lambs and feeling the alpaca, so soft, etc. etc...  Above she is holding a baby rabbit.  On leaving the petting corner we came across a little goat that was loose and walking all round the place trying it's luck at all the picnic tables and acting as a sort of hoover of anything vaguely edible!  I saw a paper bag disappear just like that!  The three kids were enchanted and it was all we could do to part them from it!  Ro and i took LM to see the cows while the others went to eat,then we joined them and Ro brought the adults a cup of tea! The other two girls hadn't had a donkey ride and they had a spare ticket for LM who was delighted!  A go on another bouncy castle sort of thing, indoors so no wet feet and we all left to take our new friends to our ice-cream place on Scout Rd.  We sat in the garden for at least 90 minutes talking while the children played  together!  
This was our last official day to look after LM as after her holiday with Mum she is going to nursery on Fridays and  we look after Grandbaby !