Adventure #2 – Proulx Berry Farm
Address: 1865 O’Toole Rd, Cumberland
Important Features: Playgrounds (6), Small Petting Zoo, washrooms, picnic tables, berry picking, so much space to run around
Proulx Berry Farm is so awesome! We spent four hours here. The cost for admission is $3/person, but the cost of the berries that you pick is then deducted from that. We paid $18 in admission, and we picked $12 worth of strawberries. She asked me if we wanted to go back and pick $6 more, because that part is not refundable, but the kids were happy with what we had and they just wanted to play on the amazing play structures. If we had picked $20 worth of berries, we only would have owed $2 more. Does that make sense? And let me tell you, $18 (for five kids and me) for four hours of super fantastic fun was so worth it.
At the entrance to the farm, there is this fun little play area:
The kids played here while I stood in line to pay and have our strawberry collecting containers weighed. You can buy baskets from them for $1/each, or you can bring your own containers. They weigh your containers and then subtract that weight from the total when you bring in the strawberries you picked to be weighed.
I would say that we picked strawberries for about half an hour. We were given two rows to pick from. The kids had a great time wandering up and down the rows looking for the biggest, reddest strawberries.
Here are some happy strawberry pickers.
One thing I loved about Proulx Berry Farm is how much space there was. The kids were able to go quite far away from me. I think that kids need that kind of space. Too often we are telling them to stay close, stay where we can see them. This is a place where I could say “go on, go to the end of the field, there might be some great berries at the very end”.
When we were done our strawberry picking, it was time to explore the amazing play structures.
1. Slide #1 – Made out of a huge plastic pipe cut in half, which you slide down on a potato sack
2. Fence Maze
This was great because you could see the kids, so you knew that they were not lost. The boys actually ran through this at top speed, more than once!
3. Awesome Dome Climbers (plus more slides and swingsets)
4. Barn, House and Yellow Slide
5. Slide #2 – Plastic slide and potato sacks
6. Farm Animals
There is a little barn with some animals to view – goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens.
7. Hay Bale Barn
Then there was this awesome barn full of hay bales that make different levels and tunnels. The kids played tag/hide and go seek here for an hour, running in and out and up and down.
There was also a slide here to quickly get down a level.
For the hour that they played in that barn, I sat this far back at a picnic table in silence … I just watched the clouds. I actually lay down on the picnic bench for a bit. It was glorious.
Again, what was so fantastic about this place was how much space there was. All the different play structures were fairly far away from each other and the kids actually ran from one to the other. I would say that they were running for most of the time we were there. It was amazing.
I would highly recommend this adventure for kids between the ages of 2 – 10. There are plenty of different options to keep all ages interested. All the kids want to go back next week to pick some raspberries and play all day again.
We would love to hear what you think about Proulx Berry Farm. Let us know if there are any other great features that we missed!
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We are going to aim to do a few of these Awesome Summer Fun Adventures each week of the summer that I have all the kids (my two and various friends). We will post our planned trips on our World-Changing Kids Facebook page a day or two before we go. We would love for you to join us if you could. To stay up to date on our plans, you could like our Facebook page here or you could email me at worldchangingkids@gmail.com and I will start a mailing list for our upcoming adventures.
We will also do some Acts of Kindness on these Awesome Summer Fun Adventures. We will try to work our way through as many of the 75 Acts of Kindness in our book, “Plant a Garden of Kindness, A Child’s Guide to Filling a Year with Weekly Acts of Kindness”, as we can.
For more information on our book – including the amazing Ottawa retail locations that carry it and instructions for ordering it online – click on the “Buy Our Book” link in the top right hand corner!