Peden Farm comes back to life during Children's Farm Festival

For the Children's Farm Festival, the late Richard and Rachel Peden's Maple Grove Road property, barns and farmhouse are transformed for two days into the working farm it once was.

From a distance, the acres appeared to be the site of a rural carnival of sorts.  But the popcorn isn't caramel coated, the animals are of the farm variety and the only ride is on a flatbed trailer pulled by a tractor through hayfields.

After a two-year COVID-19 hiatus, this annual festival catering to kids age 3 through third grade returned this year on the final two days of September. 

Some thought the grassroots enthusiasm for the event might have died during the pandemic. But it had not.

"We got lots of calls, from schools and teachers and volunteers, asking about it and wondering it would be back," said Joyce Peden, standing inside a barn near the butter churning demonstration table Thursday morning. "We've been very busy getting it all ready."

History of the Children's Farm Festival at Peden Farm

The first festival was back in 1953, when the county's 4-H agriculture leader asked the Pedens if they would be willing to have elementary school students visit the farm to learn about rural living. They would arrive by bus from Bloomington and Indianapolis, about 400 kids a year. 

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Rachel Peden, who died in 1975, had written newspaper columns about farm life for years, and published three books focused on being a farmer's wife, rural living and appreciating the land. She talked to the children about these things, maybe even the cricket she wrote about in her 1961 book "Rural Free."

"The voice of the cricket in today’s complex world is just the same as it was in an earlier American era, or even in a much more remote civilization. The same voice undoubtedly was heard by Indian women picking off the small maize ears they had produced by poking a hole in the ground with a pointed stick and dropping in a dead fish along with the precious seed."

After the stories were told, Richard Peden would take the children on wagon rides and let them feed ears of corn to the cows.

The purpose and importance of introducing kids to the farm haven't changed as the festival continued to grow. The Pedens' son, Joe, and his wife, Joyce, took over the farm festival in 1986. Eight years later,  the Monroe County Farm Bureau and local 4-H youth educator got involved, and interest in the unique hands-on event swelled.

Children's Farm Festival 2022

This year, about 2,500 children attended, along with another thousand or so parents and grandparents. More than 300 people volunteer at the festival. 

Diane Young and Nancy Deckard sat behind spinning wheels, feeding thick luster wool through their agile fingers, turning the soft fibers into strands of yarn. Children sometimes stopped, mesmerized by the process.  "They like to watch, and a lot of them want to spin the wheel, but we show them how it works and why that's not done."

About 9:15 Thursday morning, volunteer Sue Conder poured a quart of heavy cream into a big glass jar with a metal lid that has a crank and churning paddles attached. About an hour later, and after much turning of the crank, the cream had turned to thick butter.

Conder's  husband grew up on a dairy farm, and her son now milks cows for living on his farm in Clay County. "We explain to the kids how the milk comes out of the cow, and that if we do this long enought, it turns to butter. A lot of them think it all just comes from the store."

She tells the children, as they eat saltines with blobs of butter smeared on top, about a time when one of the chores for kids was to churn butter in the morning before heading off to school. 

Nearby, the line to pet a 1,200-pond white horse called Chubbs was 24 kids long. Jake Carter held the horse's head as tiny hands, one after another, reached up to touch the horse's giant face. Some were reluctant to put their hand close, others petted the horse's soft muzzle over and over, not wanting to stop.

They giggled when Ruth Jackson, whose daughter owns the horse, put a gummy bear in her palm and the horse gobbled it up.

"The line hasn't stopped since we got here," Carter said around noon Thursday. "It's the experience of a lifetime for a lot of the kids. Look at their faces. Some of them keep coming back, to feel this love."

A group of 4-year-olds from Jack and Jill Daycare in Bloomington gathered beneath the horse's head, looked up and reached. They weren't intimidated by the giant horse, and each got a turn to touch Chubbs.

Afterward, all eight joined hands with their teachers and walked toward the parking area after a morning full of adventures. Daycare owner Linda Jackson said she's been bringing preschoolers to Peden Farm for years. She's glad the event is back.

"Some of these kids have never seen a farm. When we pulled in, one looked over at the pond and said, 'Look, there's a pool.' This is hands-on learning like no other, and we always bring our 4-year-olds so they can experience this."

Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.