What is an Educational Farm Setting?
An educational farm setting encourages education through practical, hands-on experience(s), while working alongside the farm inhabitants on the land as an outdoor classroom.
At Sunflower Farms our Vision and Dream is to spark and/or rekindle each flame that may have been dimmed towards agricultural settings. This ignited flame will conceivably offer a desire for “HOW” to cultivate and honor the land. Our educational farm setting(s) will meet each individual participant at their own learning style and pace, while celebrating their personal growth and achievements. There are many opportunities to work in our nature-based (no pesticides) garden alongside an amazing team of farm animals, teaching ages 3 to 90+ a cultivated way of life.
Our Educational Farm Setting offers “back to the basics” farm adventures, suitably equipped to carry out learning activities that are especially fitting for homeschooled chapters and/or students working alongside other organized adventure-based groups. The farm and the inhabitants of the land, are active teaching classrooms, encouraging individual observations, exploration and discovery along with learning practical hands-on skills. The participants experience the unexpected within a magical realm that utilizes nature as its laboratory. The active teaching setting compliments any traditional and/or conventional schools. Parents and/or family members may also participate in the opportunity to take children, youth, adults and or seniors on a journey to discover the countryside. They will learn how and where cultivation begins within the realm of flowers, bumble bees, butterflies, birds, and so forth alongside our incredibly gentle and kind farm animals.
The countryside of Norfolk County is like an open market place revealing how and where food originates from, thus allowing “us” to form valuable connections for honoring the land, animals and humans alike.
Mary Howe
Our Field Healers
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HORSES ASK HUMANS FOR HELP
Japanese researchers have investigated whether horses try to communicate with humans when faced with a problem and found that they ask us for help.
Eight horses and their student caretakers at Kobe University took part in a clever experiment looking at how horses communicate with their handlers.
For the first part of the study, a researcher put a carrot in a bucket while a horse watched from a distance. The bucket was out of the horse’s reach on the other side of their paddock fence. The horse’s caretaker was not present to see this happen, so when they then arrived back soon afterwards to join the horse, the horse had the opportunity to know the caretaker wasn’t aware of the hidden carrot.
For the second part of the experiment, the caretaker stayed next to the paddock when the assistant came and repeated the carrot hiding process. In this case, the caretaker could have seen that the carrot was placed in the bucket and the horse may have been aware of this.
The researchers observed the horses behaviour to see whether they tried to communicate with their caretakers and how they did this.
In both parts of the experiment, the horses did try to communicate with their human. Each horse stayed close to their caretaker and looked at, touched and pushed them.
However, If the caretaker hadn’t been present when the food was hidden, the horses gave more signals – performing the looking, touching and pushing behaviours more actively and for much longer than when the caretaker was not present for the carrot hiding.
These results are fascinating, they show that when horses can’t solve problems on their own they may try and communicate with humans visually – by looking, and physically – by touching and pushing.
The results also show that horses may change their behaviour in response to the knowledge levels of humans. This could suggest that horses possess high cognitive skills and great awareness and sensitivity of what we see and do and that they will then alter their behaviour accordingly.
How many of us listen to our horses and notice when they are trying to communicate with us?
You can read the study in full here: Ringhofer, M., Yamamoto, S. Domestic horses send signals to humans when they face an unsolvable task.
Our “Farm Fur Babies”
Horses & Human
Limbic Loop Connection
Limbic Loop Connection
The Limbic System, located right under the cerebrum, is responsible for the feeling of emotions, behaviour, motivation, and long-term memory. It is remarkably similar to that found in horses.
“Both horses and humans have limbic systems that are remarkably similar, and both are highly social and need contact with others for their own neural regulation.”
Because of these similarities within the limbic system, working with horses from a therapeutic standpoint allows the horses to relate to the limbic system in humans. Since the horse does not have a largely developed neocortex (analytical brain), it enables them to come from a nonjudgmental place reflecting others behaviors. They respond to what is happening in the moment – based on comfort and safety. The natural state of rest within the horse species combined with being nonjudgmental can create a healing space of calm and trust. This allows limbic revision to take place – a way for a person to safely create new neurological pathways of how to respond to certain emotional patterns.
Our Farm Animal Healers
Our Moo-Moo’s
Luk and Miss Lily
Luk getting his hooves trimmed what an amazing experience 
Miss Lily needing some tenderness while getting her hooves trimmed even little Luna came over to help me lay calming hands on her forehead
Hanging out with Kim and the horses at Sonflower Stables. Talking about the benefits of sage.
Posted by Dave Scott on Tuesday, September 4, 2018
FEATURED POST
Sunflower Farms provides an equine connection for those seeking personal understanding
“Magical” is a word that comes up several times when trying to describe how it feels to participate in equine-assisted learning.
