Farming: A Mini Unit

This study can go hand-in-hand with the gardening mini unit in the article archive of EasyFunSchool. Where the gardening unit covers growing edible plants, the farming unit covers growing animals for food or fibers (such as sheep's wool). The two units could be combined for a full unit study on growing your food for fun or profit.

1. If possible, care for an animal that is usually raised for food such as a chicken, rabbit, or lamb, for two weeks. Keep a daily record of what you did.

2. As an alternative to activity #1, choose an animal you would like to raise. Record how you would take care of this animal for two weeks. Include the kidn and amount of food, feeding schedules, where you animal would live, how it would get its exercise, and special health problems of this animal.

3. Go fishing for fresh water fish, salt water fish, or shellfish. Learn the names of the fish you are trying to catch and get a fishing permit if you need one. Get the right kind of bait, line, and/or other equipment. Help clean, cook, and eat some of the fish you catch.

4. Choose a body of water located near your home, if possible. Find out what kind of fish are found and caught there during different seasons of the year and if any fish or other foods are harvested from this body of water for commercial use.

5. Try your hand at food processing. Make butter, cheese, yogurt, raisins, applesauce, or a processed food of your own choice.

6. Tour a farm, ranch, aquafarm, or agribusiness. Ask questions about the things that interest you. After the visit, describe what you saw, heard, felt, smelled, and/or tasted.

7. Visit a food or fiber processing plant. Learn all you can about the steps involved in getting something from the field to you as a finished product. You might visit a cannery, a flour mill, a cereal plant, a feed or meal company, a frozen food processing plant, a wool or cotton mill, a citrus processing plant, a meat/fish/poultry packing company.

8. Visit a veterinarian. Find out about the work she/he does. Does this person work with farm animals as well as with people’s pets? Find out what it takes to become a veterinarian.

9. Show in a way of your own choosing how you would have done at least two of the following on a farm or ranch in the early 1800s, how you would do them today, and how you might do them 100 years into the future:

-- Plow a field
-- Harvest a crop
-- Cook a meal
-- Milk a cow
-- Make clothes
-- Graze the animals
-- Round up the animals
-- Get food to the animals

10. Visit a place where water plants or animals are being raised for food or fertilizer; or for ornamentation or jewelry.

[Hint: Hold down arrow buttons to turn carousel.]

Search the pages of our EasyFunSchool.com website
and the entire FamilyClassroom Network with the box below!