farm field trips colorado

Farm Field Trips

• Colon Orchards Cañon City, CO

During The Entire Month of October

As a farm that’s been in operation in Canon City for over 80 years, we have developed our own way in nurturing all the produce we grow at Colon Orchards. Our processes have helped us make sure we are only providing you with the finest and freshest produce and we will gladly take you through everything we do, tell you about why we do it, and show you the results of our hard work. 

Learning Fun At Colon Orchards

At Colon Orchards, everyone on staff is friendly and so excited to show you around. There's no doubt when you come to Colon Orchards that you will have a great time.  From the moment you set foot on the farm, throughout the trip, and until you leave, the Colon Orchards family will be there to answer questions.

On Your Colon Orchards Field Trip, You Will:

• Learn how apples grow
• Learn about different types of pumpkins 
• Get to pick an apple from an apple tree
• Get to "drink an apple" with our world-famous Will's Apple Cider
• Go through our corn maze
• Take an authentic hayride
• Pick the perfect pumpkin to take home

We want all of our visitors to leave Colon Orchards with a brand new perspective on farming and locally grown produce. We will explain how we make a corn maze, tell you how many pumpkins we grow each year, and teach you about all of the different types of pumpkins we grow. We promise your kids will leave Colon Orchards knowing a little more than they did before the field trip. 

All educational, farm field trips must be booked in advance. 

Farm Fresh Produce Is Waiting For you

Questions let us know.

Self-Guided Package

School group rates offered to accredited schools, preschools, daycares, clubs, organizations and mother’s-day-out programs. To qualify for the group rate, each group must have 15 or more people, and make an advance reservation. Teachers free

Self-Guided Package - $8.50 to add additional children from the class, and $8.50 for additional guests (parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.).  Purchased at the time of arrival.

Non Student Guests - Family/Siblings (Receives the same rate as the student price.)

STAFF: Admission for teachers (head of class), paid staff and bus drivers are FREE. The leader of a daycare group, or homeschool group of at least 15 children will be FREE. Parent volunteers will be charged the field trip admission price.

SEASON PASSES & COUPONS (Season passes or coupons cannot be used towards Field Trip Admissions)

Your group may stay for as long as you would like between 9:30am - 5:00pm.  

Email Staci at [email protected] to book!

Educational Guided Package

Educational Guided Package - $9.00 to add additional children from the class, and $9.00 for additional guests (parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.). Purchased at the time of arrival.

Pick Fresh Veggies (Additional Purchase Required)

Animal Interactions 

Jump On The Tire Pile & Hay Bales

Barrel & Hayrack Rides

Experience Farm Life

Learn About Crops 

Feed The Animals  (Additional Purchase Required)

*30 minutes of an educational unit at the beginning of the field trip. 

Y our group may stay for as long as you would like between 9:30am - 5:00pm.

Email Staci at nelsonproduceevents@gma il.com to book!

Colorado State University

Contact your local county Extension office through our County Office List .

Online Directory

• Farm-to-Foodbank
• Farm-To-School Field Trips
• Nutrition Education
• In the News

Farm-To-School Field Trips   

On the Farm

The orchards and fields of the Western Colorado Research Center at Orchard Mesa lend themselves to use as an outdoor classroom for hands-on learning in food, agriculture, natural resources, healthy eating, and civic service. We host schools and organizations in the spring, when students plant in our greenhouse and fields. In the summer and fall students harvest and taste fresh fruits and vegetables. The produce is donated to area food banks and given to their school cafeteria in partnership with SD51 Nutrition Services. We also partner with the Eureka! Science Museum to provide day camps in agriculture and cooking.

Field Trip Overview

If you are a school and would like to visit, please schedule a field trip through the Eureka! website .

If you are affiliated with a youth organization such as Girl or Boy Scouts, church youth group, or a homeschool group, please contact us for more information through this FORM .

Supporting your Problem Based Learning

We have partnered with many schools in providing real-life application of students’ problem-based learning (PBL) projects through field trips to the Research Center. We can provide more context to the field trip by visiting your classroom prior to or after your visit to support learning in food, agriculture, natural resources, and healthy eating. 

Spring Field Trips

Why Spring?

Spring field trips to WCRC-OM typically take place March through May, during our planting season. Students will have the opportunity to plant vegetable seedlings in the fields and learn about topics like plant science, agriculture, or pollinators. We aim to bring all students back for a fall field trip to harvest what they planted!

Spring field trips work best when students revisit in the fall! When inquiring about a spring field trip, consider reserving a follow-up field trip in the fall. Schools register through Eureka ! Youth groups of less than 25 students inquire HERE .

Fall Field Trips

Harvest season at WCRC-OM takes place from July to October. Fall field trips usually happen in August, September, and October. Students will have the opportunity to harvest seasonal vegetables and fruits that will donated either to food banks or to their own school cafeterias! Students can then head to our teaching kitchen to try different ways of preparing vegetables and fruits. We can also incorporate lessons about healthy eating/nutrition, local food, or civic service.

Fall field trips work best with students who have already visited in the spring! Schools register through Eureka ! Youth groups of less than 25 students inquire HERE .

Volunteering with Family

We love Families

We love having families volunteer with us. Whether in our small gardens or harvesting crops for food pantries, we have lots of fun learning spaces that provide positive experiences around healthy food, nature, and giving to others.

Please visit our volunteer page to get on our mailing list.

We increase the nutritional security of our community by harnessing our collective strengths.

Learn more.

The Community Alliance program is based on the Western Slope of Colorado and coordinated by staff at the Western Colorado Research Center and Tri-River Extension Office .

Our volunteers are key to fulfilling our mission. Whether you are harvesting food for others or applying your special talents, we have a job for you.

Please visit volunteer .

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Bring Your Group Out to the Farm

Rock Creek Farm is a great place for your school field trip this fall.   Visit our pumpkin patch, corn mazes and animals, then unwind at our giant picnic tables.

As a real, working farm, Rock Creek Farm is great for school outings. Kids will not only have fun, but also learn about where food comes from as they meet animals and explore fields of corn, pumpkins and grain.

Interested in setting a up a school trip? Contact Us

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Experience the Farm|Plan Your Visit|Family Fun

U-pick-em pumpkins, farm animals, family fun area.

Activities for All Ages

Bring your friends and family out to Rock Creek Farm for a day of Halloween fun in beautiful Broomfield, Colorado, located in Boulder County.

Visit with our pigs, goats, cows, sheep and other farm animals.

Enjoy our selection of fall festive treats and decorations such as gourds, indian corn, baked goods, straw bales and more.

A Hands-On Vacation at a Colorado Farm

Cultivate a memorable, educational vacation with by spending a week volunteering on one of Colorado’s organic farms.

I have a brown thumb. Brown, in case you don’t have an art-loving preschooler at home, is the opposite of green on the color wheel, and it’s also the product of pouring a bunch of paint onto the kitchen floor then swirling it together when your mom is putting lasagna in the oven.

Dumping a bunch of seeds into a planter then crossing myself was my main gardening strategy. I’m so bad at keeping houseplants alive that I’m not even supposed to breathe near my husband’s vast assortment of philodendron, cacti, spider, and snake plants. So when I told Ben that our next family vacation was to Mancos, to live and work on an organic market farm in southwest Colorado, he was flabbergasted.

No-no, I explained. That’s the whole point. I’m supposed to be terrible at gardening. The WWOOF program was built for people like me.

Planting the Seed

When Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) was founded in the United Kingdom in 1971, it was a modest operation linking “anybody, regardless of age or experience, with organic farmers,” explained Tori Fetrow, WWOOF-USA’s outreach manager.

Sue Coppard was a London secretary looking for an affordable, meaningful way to spend weekends in the English countryside with other like-minded Brits. As agritourism emerged across the globe, Coppard began organizing small-group trips to organic farms.

Visitors got a weekend away from the city, in nature, in return for their labor, and word of Coppard’s grassroots farming program spread like edible weeds, completely organically by word of mouth. Today, urbanites can “WWOOF” on tens of thousands of farms in 130 countries.

“Countries operate their own programs, but we all collaborate through an overarching network sharing a mission,” says Fetrow. That mission is to build a global community dedicated to sustainable agriculture. Eco-friendly travel and unforgettable experiences are bonuses that grew out of the model.

Select a Variety

Families interested in volunteering first need to create a WWOOF-USA account. There is a small annual membership fee of $40 for an individual or $65 for a couple, two friends, or a family. After updating a profile, search through the organization’s network of 1,708 organic farms, ranches, gardens, and homesteads. Reading about the sites—“…acres of land with abundant oak and redwood forest, maritime chaparral, and wild huckleberry!”—it’s easy to get caught up dreaming about all the places you and your family could land.

Colorado currently has around 52 hosts, 17 of which are family-friendly. “Some people assume it’s impossible to WWOOF with young children, but that’s not the case,” Fetrow says. Filters will narrow even more options. After selecting “Colorado” and “WWOOFing with Children,” families can get more specific, searching by dietary restrictions, preferred accommodations, et cetera.

A handful of Colorado hosts welcome weekend visitors—a great option for families and first-timers. “We’ve recently added search filters to ensure mentoring opportunities for people of color, women, LBGTQ, and veteran WWOOFers in the U.S.,” adds Fetrow.

There’s been a huge uptick in interest in the program since the emergence of the pandemic last March. “In the past, WWOOFing was an affordable way to travel to a new area,” Fetrow says. “This year, though, more people than ever are WWOOFing closer to home, trying shorter experiences, all to gain knowledge about organic homesteading.”

WWOOF-USA has been a pandemic-proof option for college students earning off-campus credit, as well as high-school graduates taking a gap year. “We also have parents who want to get their kids off screens and onto the farm,” says Fetrow.

Every WWOOF-USA arrangement is unique since participants and their hosts coordinate trip details on a case-by-case basis. People spend anywhere from a weekend up to several weeks or a growing season living on a host farm, working about four hours a day in exchange for room, board, and the host’s know-how.

After settling on Green Table Farm, I emailed the host, Tyler Hoyt, and we set up a preliminary phone call.

Like my 10-year-old, I’m a leap-before-looker. So during the call, I didn’t think twice when Tyler described the living arrangements as a converted Volkswagen van and composting toilet shared with Tyler’s brother and a college student from Boulder.

My second thoughts surfaced a few weeks later, around 10 p.m., after a daylong car ride from Denver to Mancos that ended with me staring at a cramped converted van a few feet from a drop toilet and rigged solar shower. The place would have been fun a decade ago, when Ben and I were newlyweds, but it seemed impossible with three children, including a baby, and the looming threat of a pandemic. With two grad school friends living in Mancos, just a few miles south of Green Table Farm, we didn’t have any trouble finding last-minute lodging for our weeklong adventure.

“We highly encourage clear communication between farmers and WWOOFers,” Fetrow says. “Ask what the accommodations look like. Ask for photos; try a video call.”

Many hosts have RV hookups available. An RV is an easy, self-contained option for families. Weekend WWOOFing is also a rewarding opportunity for families. Typically, overnight accommodations aren’t offered for weekenders. “You’re going to farm for a morning, maybe sharing lunch with the host, taking home some of the harvest as a reward,” Fetrow says.“These day trips are much easier to line up.”

We spent our mornings working on the farm, from about 8 a.m. until noon, and spent the afternoons as tourists, exploring the tiny, artsy community of Mancos, visiting Mancos State Park and Mesa Verde National Park.

On a WWOOF farm, parents work alongside their children. It’s a bonding experience, and pretty good exercise, too. At Green Table Farm we weeded vegetable patches (cathartic), cleaned a barn filled with hay and chicken poop (yowza), and harvested and processed a sizable amount of red and white onions to sell at the Mancos Farmers Market on Thursday afternoon, the culmination of our work.

Cultivating the Experience

Several people have asked me what I did to prepare my kids for the experience. “Did they know in advance that they’d have to work?” While some aspects of farming definitely felt like work to me, for my kids the experience was pure fun. Kids are built to be active, and mine didn’t complain once. Mostly they were fascinated by the opportunity to experience, firsthand, an unfamiliar way of life.

It helped that our host, Tyler, has a family of his own. His wife owns and operates a local food truck, and they have a very friendly preschooler. Whenever my boys grew bored with weeding or harvesting, they’d take breaks to play with our host’s son or explore Green Table Farm or collect eggs. (Tyler keeps hundreds of free-range chickens, as well as pigs and goats.) My boys didn’t realize it, but they got quite a few hands-on lessons in ecology and economics, and Tyler was a patient teacher to all of us.

When our 12-month-old wasn’t sleeping on my back, she practiced walking in the rows of vegetables while Ben and I weeded and harvested. We brought our own energy bars, baby food, and reusable water bottles to refill on the farm. Hosts will usually provide food, but if kids have specific snacks they enjoy, bring those. Packing for our WWOOF trip was similar to packing for a camping trip, and when we ran out of energy bars, we restocked at a natural foods store in Mancos.

While we worked, Tyler rattled off all sorts of useful tidbits about crop rotation, harvest techniques, and beneficial insects. But the best advice was this: “You don’t have to go home and launch your own market farm,” he said. “Start with one or two vegetables you know you’ll eat, and just see what happens.”

The majority of WWOOF members are people who want to learn how to grow their own food or live sustainably. “A lot of WWOOFers go home and plant their own kitchen gardens,” Fetrow says.

That’s exactly what we did. I’m still not allowed to breathe on Ben’s philodendron and most of my family’s food still comes from the store, but since August I’ve grown and harvested Lacinato kale and microgreens. Over the holidays, we began experimenting with a wheatgrass hydroponics garden, inspired by our memories on the farm.

Our experience will definitely not be the end of WWOOFing for my family. This summer, I plan to return to the fields and learn even more. Then maybe, someday, a dream WWOOF in Hawaii.

Jamie Siebrase is a Denver-based mother of three, author of Hiking with Kids Colorado: 52 Great Hikes for Families, and an emerging green thumb.

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Farm Field Trips

Fall field trips at Cottonwood Farms in Lafayette, CO

Learn about agriculture while having fun!

Reservations

We are now accepting reservations for school field trips. Field trips are available Monday through Friday, October 1 - 31

Field Trip Reservations

field trip includes

• Information on growing pumpkins and other vegetables
• Farm animals and their place on the farm
• Tractors and their operation
• Free time with teachers in the mazes
• Each student will take home a pie pumpkin
• Class will also get one large pumpkin
• Every weekday in October

Most of our trips are for preschool to second grade.

For higher grades, middle school to high school, we are able to offer a trip that would be more advanced and cover topics like water, soil health, and regenerative farming principles.

planning your visit

Most groups spend about 1 to 1 1/2 hour for the total visit. Large groups will be broken down into smaller groups for touring. We do have some tent space for groups wanting to have lunch or snack. Please let us know if you plan this.

We will be open regardless of weather. We have many students scheduled to visit. It is important that groups arrive on time. If you have schedule difficulties call Bob on cell phone at 303-931-1591 so we know you are running late.

This is an outside activity and students should come dressed for the day's weather. We will be walking on grass and fields which may be wet or muddy.

We will conduct a 20-30 minute tour where we will see and talk about tractors and harvest equipment, animals ( calves, sheep , goats, chickens, and rabbits) and their use on the farm, and how pumpkins, squash and corn are grown. Questions are encouraged.

After the tour students can form small groups with the teachers and parents. They can go through the straw bale maze, corn maze or go back to look at any of the things covered on the tour.

We will give each student a bag with their pie pumpkin on the way out. The teacher can pick out one big pumpkin for the class.

Rules for students visiting the farm

Our first priority is for the safety of our guests, our employees, ourselves, and our animals. For these reasons we must insist on a few rules while visiting the farm.

Students need to be reminded that they cannot climb on the tractors, fences straw bales or anything else. We do not want to see anyone injured.

The corn in the maze dries down in the fall and the leaves become very sharp on the edges and will give a very nasty cut. It is best if no one touches the corn as they walk through.

Students should not feed the animals anything as this could make them sick. Students will be in direct contact with farm animals and need to have their hands cleaned before they eat anything. We do not have washing facilities. We recommend use of some type of sanitary cleansing towels. We do have a portable toilet on site.

Thank you for visiting!

We are looking forward to seeing you. Please call if you have any questions.

Bob and Amy Condon

P.S. - GrowingYourFuture.com has some excellent agricultural resources for teachers

Cottonwood Farms

Fall Hours 10 AM to 6 PM September 23 - October 31

Credit Cards Welcome

Address 10600 Isabelle Rd. Lafayette, CO 80026

(720) 890-4766 [email protected] facebook.com/cottonwoodfarmsboulder