We’ve spent the past few days at Prairie Farmer telling the stories of how Illinois farm kids spent their quarantines in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdown. Today is the conclusion of a four-part series:
• Living the farm kid quarantine life
• Farm kid quarantine: Nurses, runners and wrestlers
• Farm kid view: How I spent my quarantine
Sure, a lot of farm kids spent time working on the farm. But a lot also launched creative endeavors, in the form of YouTube channels and fun videos. Like 13-year-old Conley Schick, a young Simmental enthusiast from Clinton, Ill. Conley had seen compilation videos of people catching an object, then tossing it out of the frame. It didn’t take her long to realize she could do the same thing with a calf and a show stick.
So Conley and her family asked members of the Illinois Junior Simmental Association to send in short video clips of them catching a show stick from the left, setting up their heifer, then tossing it out to the right. Clips poured in. Conley put them together, set it to music, and they published it with the hashtag #StickItToCOVID. The group challenged other state junior associations to do the same, and several responded with their own video.
Over in Cambridge, Ill., young Levi Wexell needed some reading practice incentive: enter an enthusiastic bottle calf. His mom, Christine Wexell, says the 7-year-old needed to continue working on reading and sight cards. “But it’s summer and he hates being inside — so we find fun ways to work on reading and sight cards outside.”
Levi’s slogan? “Reading isn’t fun, but I love cows so, OK, fine, I’ll read.” Take a look here at how that went.
And be sure to check out 7-year-old Garren Boelens’ new YouTube channel, Grow with Garren. He bugged his mom, Carrie Boelens, to let him start it until she said yes.
Says Carrie, “The best line from Garren was, ‘I love quarantine, let’s do it all the time.’ If that doesn’t hit all the feels, I don’t know what does! This quarantine changed our lives in a magical way.”
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