Little Farm Hands

“Little Farm Hands at the Fair” is an agricultural education exhibit for kids. Children (ages 3-12) become farm hands at this free, hands-on exhibit as they are provided the opportunity to experience the agricultural process, beginning at the farm and ending at the market. Each year over 40,000 Little Farm Hands and their families don their work aprons and fire up their imaginations to help with farm chores, collect goods to sell at the farmers’ market, and then spend their “earnings” on real products made from the farm at the grocery store.

This mock-farm consists of a series of five miniature barns, a grain bin, a tractor yard, six garden plots, an apple orchard and a farmers’ market connected by a self-guided pathway that directs families from a starting point to the last step in the process at the grocery store. A free Make ‘n’ Take area featuring agricultural-based activities is provided at the end of the exhibit by “Ag in the Classroom” and the University of Minnesota’s Ag & U program.

Each building provides hands-on tasks related to planting crops and the tending of animals. For example, at the chicken coop, the farm hands feed the chickens the grain they “harvested” and then collect the eggs. At the dairy barn children milk a cow and collect milk cartons and at the tractor shed they drive peddle tractors with wagons to haul the hay for the animals.

After the children have gone through each of the miniature barns and collected their products, they “sell” them at the farmers’ market for “cash” to be used at the retail grocery store where they have the opportunity to “buy” their finished product e.g. apples, milk, cereal, soy nuts, cans of fruit & vegetables, etc.

For further information, please e-mail us or call us directly at (651) 288-4417.