Get Outside & Learn!

Children will flock to Amazing Acres Farm in Holly Springs this summer for camp. Learning about farm animals and the relationship between people and the land, children from rising first graders to eighth graders will have the chance at hands-on experience.

Kathleen Kesselring and her husband, David, started the summer program on Piney Grove Wilbon Road after their three sons didn’t have anywhere they could go to learn an appreciation for the natural world.

Kathleen said the family always had lots of animals and different types of plants growing, even before starting up the farm nearly four years ago.

“We were always the crazy house on the street,” Kathleen said.

The Kesselrings teach children about diversity, patience and kindness as part of the curriculum Kathleen designed to go along with camp activities. Each age group learns different lessons centered on farm animals and the organic plants in the garden.

“We really lay it on thick, and the kids eat it up,” she said. “If the kids can make an emotional connection, they will appreciate the earth. You can’t get that from a video game or a computer.”

Kids get to pet, brush and feed farm animals like ducks, chickens, turkeys, goats and pigs. They also have the opportunity to play games outside and plant vegetable or flower seeds.

Children can even check to see if the chickens have laid their eggs each day, while Kathleen teaches that some chickens lay brown eggs while others lay green ones at Amazing Acres Farm.

The first and most important topic Kathleen teaches kids is how to wash their hands. The small groups help keep the ratio of kids to adults low, but also to make it possible for kids to have the hands-on experience the Kesselrings pride themselves on.

“It means a lot to me that the kids go away with so much,” Kathleen said.

All of the animals are considered companion animals; they are not raised for the meat. The Kesselrings often find themselves a home to strays or geriatric animals that need a good home to live out their days.

“The animals just find us,” Kathleen said. “They’re just our little babies.”

Two ducklings found their way into the farm last week after Kathleen went to Green Hope Elementary for a school visit with the animals.

The two baby ducks were lost and wandered into the school. Some teachers thought the ducklings belonged to the Amazing Acres Farm and called Kathleen to come by for them.

Even though the Kesselrings didn’t have ducklings less than a week old, like the two babies, they accepted them into their farm family.

The camp was nominated for one of Nickelodeon’s Parents’ Pick awards this year for best day camp. The awards go out to the best kids’ museum, best toy store, best green space, best playground or park and many other categories in 52 major cities across the United States.

“That’s quite an honor,” Kathleen said.

Kathleen said the farm is open each Saturday in October for an open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Parents can also bring children out during the last week in September when the farm celebrates its membership of the Take-a-child-outside network.

The farm camp runs at $50 per child per day or $200 per week. The farm also holds camps on teacher workdays. Mini camps run at $125.

The farm accepts 35 students for each week of camp. Spaces are still available.

Amazing Acres begins its farm camps for the summer June 11. For more information on the summer camps, call 919-349-7153 or email Kathleen at Kathleen@GetOutsideAndLearn.com.

Decades ago going to the city was a treat for this area’s rural kids.

These days it’s a trip to the farm that is a little more exotic.

That’s why Kathleen Kesselring started the Amazing Acres Farm camp at her Holly Springs home three years ago.

She wanted to give the area’s suburban kids a chance to experience the country life she grew up loving during camping trips in New York.

“There’s so much that’s significant on the planet besides ourselves,” Kesselring said.

Those things can be seen on the eight acres that stretch mostly in front of her home close to the N.C. 55 bypass.

While her farm harkens to Holly Springs’ past — goats, chickens, turkeys and pigs find a home there — the farm butts up to a piece of Holly Springs’ future: a large subdivision.

Kesselring says the neighbors don’t mind.

The kids who come to the farm are often from similar suburban neighborhoods, kids who know more about video games than farm animals.

The kids who come to the farm come from schools and other groups and while at the farm do simple chores around the place, such as taking care of the animals and the small garden.

And these days, with several area schools on nontraditional calendars, the farm is busy just about year-round.

On a recent teacher workday Kesselring was hosting a group of about eight children for the day.

They were busy feeding pygmy goats — really small goats — beneath the hot spring sun.

Kindergartener Damion Younts, 5, loved the pygmy goats “because they’re so cute.”

Then the group, which had already spent the morning tending plants, moved on to see Charlie, a duck whose bill was damaged from a run-in with one of the farm’s pot-bellied pigs.

Charlie’s bill had healed long ago, but Kesselring still held him protectively while she told the kids about how his webbed feet helped him move quickly through the water.

Most of the farm’s lessons are hands on. Not only is it fun for the kids to pet the animals and touch the plants they are learning about, it makes them retain the information better, Kesselring said.

Three kids who have retained the information really well are Kesselring’s sons, Jack, Brian and Matt, who often help teach at the camps.

“I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with speaking to people,” said Jack, a sophomore at Holly Springs High School.

Mostly though it’s Kesselring’s show and her passion.

The 40-year-old moved the family from Cary specifically to start the farm.

She didn’t grow up on a farm herself, but each summer her family would leave their Staten Island home and go camping in the mountains.

She loves being outdoors and in nature and her little farm in a way is like coming home.