Fun times at Hacienda Chan Chan

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Hacienda Chan Chan is a dairy and working farm near Chiquintad, a small town kind of close to Cuenca. They named it Hacienda Chan Chan because Chan Chan is a river right next to the farm.

Milking Cows
When our family was at the farm Jasper and I got to milk some cows bare hand. It was really fun, I had never had a chance to milk cows in my life. The family that owned the farm had about 30 milking cows. A lot of the cows were embarazada (which means pregnant in Spanish). A machine milked the cows, but the workers let me milk them just to try it. The cows are milked at 5:30 am and 3:00pm, 2 times a day. Wow that’s a lot!!!!!

Horses
Patsy is a donkey and Fiona is a caballo. They are really nice. Patsy was a snuggle bunny so she really likes kids and snuggles. Fiona the horse was not trained yet, because she was only two.

There was a girl named Gwen (one of the kids who lived on the farm) and she said that Fiona was going to be her horse when Fiona was trained. I was able to go horseback riding on a horse named Ben. Ben was a bit stubborn but I am still grateful that I even got to hop on a horse at a working dairy farm. When we were done riding Ben we were told just to take off the saddle tie him up to the post again. So we did, but Ben kept neighing and neighing because he wanted his friends. Of course my mom wanted Jasper and I to go tell Julie (she owns the farm with her husband Luke) what we should do with Ben. Julie said just leave him there, and…that’s what we did. But about half an hour later I saw Ben trotting to a field of barley. I told my mom, Ben is running to a field of barley. Mom said it is okay.

The next day my dad and I went to see if Ben was okay. So I went first, and saw that Ben was still in the spot eating away. I noticed that the rope was on him from the day before. I grabbed the rope and got Ben to walk with me. He was kind of trotting so I got a little scared and let go of the rope. Ben stopped so I tried to get a hold of it again. I could not because he almost bucked me right in the head. Luckily he didn’t.

After a little while my dad finally came, and we helped Ben into the other field but we just couldn’t quite figure out how to get him past the fence.

On the last day when we had to say goodbye to Patsy and Fiona I cried because I did not want to leave them. When everyone else left I was still there with Patsy and Fiona, but when my dad was walking towards me I walked closer to Patsy and Fiona.

My dad called out “you will want to hear this”. He told me that Julie comes into town every Friday and maybe one of those Fridays we can have a sleep over at the farm. Now I am happy about that because we will get to have a sleepover in 2 weeks and stay at the farm again with Lyall Nash and Sheryl Nash (my grandparents).

Adios hacienda Chan Chan