momfoolery: The Sassy Pea Market

This morning my mom and I took Felix out to the Sassy Pea Market/Good Earth Farm up in Leander. I'd heard about it because they sell local, pastured chickens and grass-fed beef, and I happened to notice on their site that they also had a petting zoo. Maestra had the morning off of work, so we headed up there.

It was amazing! I was expecting a store and a little corral with a sheep and some bunnies out back, but it was actually a child care center on a farm, with a little store off to the side that sells meat out of a little freezer in one room, and handmade wares (pottery, wooden children's toys, soaps, etc) in another.

You pay $4 to get into the farm area and they give you a handful of carrots to feed the animals and a map of the farm. Rather than being a petting zoo where you have full access to the animals, they come up to the fence of their pens and you're able to pet them and feed them. I'm sure the animals appreciate the separation from grabby little hands!

As if the animals weren't cool enough, everywhere you looked there was something fun for kids to do. A gated fairy garden with a table set for tea, painted tree stumps to jump on, a gigantic "giant's chair" to climb on, a path through some woods with a play kitchen to play house in, a balance beam, a rope swing, a huge climbable tree, play houses, huge industrial spools brightly painted and used as tables, all hand made and hand painted with love. I might have enjoyed it more than Felix did, and now my brain is whirring on how I can transform my backyard into something resembling this magic place.