Down on the Farm

This morning we had a lovely treat when my friend, and fellow Fife blogger, Kat invited us to her farm to meet the new calves and Jock, the bull. Kat blogs about life down on the farm over at www.lochaberfarm.com sharing her family's journey as they develop their land from empty field to a fully operational farm (she also shares great recipes often using ingredients I would never have thought to use!).

We recently received a lovely book about an adorable bull and the day it arrived Kat also shared a photo of her daughter and their bull Jock! A perfect coincidence. It was an absolutely freezing cold morning today but we got our wellies on and BookBairn bravely approached these huge cows and the bull to say hello! She said "the cows are cool, mummy!" but was less impressed about getting her wellies muddy.

Jock the bull.

Before we visited we spent breakfast time reading 'Adorabull' by Alison Donald and Alex Willmore which is a truly adorable story! It is a tale of Tom and his pet bull, Alfred. But after starting school and leaving Alfred on a daily basis Tom wants to bring home a new adorable pet. Alfred doesn’t want to be replaced in Tom’s heart so he ups his game to be adorable too with hilarious, and not so adorable results. He has a quick search of the word adorable on the farmer's phone and tries to imitate the images resulting in some mishaps, a makeover and many many giggles for us readers. I can’t spoil the ending for you but don't worry Tom doesn't replace Alfred in his heart. And the final illustration is adorable! BookBairn even said "awwwww!" the first time we read it.  A lovely story about accepting who you are. It’s an adorable book. (I’ve said adorable a lot in this post.)

On the way home in the car I handed BookBairn 'Who's Hiding on the Farm?' by Katharine McEwen which was a great book for BookBairn to explore by herself and will be even better to read together. She lifted the flaps (over twenty in the five double-page spreads) and told me all the creatures she could spot underneath as well as the ones in the fields as we drove home. After the animals (bairns) were fed, The Wee Page Turner picked it up too and started exploring it's flaps too. We will read it together too as there are lots of farm facts that we can learn under each flap. The illustrations are soft and beautifully designed so that there an appearance of texture too. There are so many details to look at too - a lot of time and love has obviously gone in to creating them! 


I love it when we can bring to life the stories from our books and use books to enhance what we have seen in our real life. That's what it's all about. And today was a wonderful adventure doing both! Thank you so much for having us Jock, farmer Dan and Kat!
 


DISCLAIMER: We were sent both these book for review from the publishers but as you can see I loved them so much that I wanted to bring them to life for BookBairn and The Wee Page Turner so you are guaranteed that we love them. And words and opinions are our own!