All about the bunnies: Across CT, farm camps offer kids a chance to connect with nature

The stone creek bed was cool and firm, as the water wound its way around the ankles and hands of little explorers searching the banks of Halfway River in Monroe.

Summer is molting season for crawfish, and a series of “oohs” and “ahhs” overtook the group as a tiny crustacean shed its shell in someone’s hands. Delighted squeals echoed off the trees. The slow summer sun cast its rays onto happy faces.

That’s just another day at Zenko Family Farm Camp. For the last 23 years, Joan Zenko has run a six-session week-long day camp. Kids come to the farm and spend the day grooming horses, hunting for crawfish in a riverbed and learning to care for farm animals.

She said that in a six-hour camp day, kids will participate in activities like horseback riding and grooming lessons, hay rides, water activities in the river and games and crafts.

But there’s one type of activity that Zenko said kids like best: being in the pens with the animals.

“The parents want to hear all about the horseback riding, but it’s so funny that that’s all [the kids] talk about when they leave, the bunny rabbits they got to play with,” she said.

Dawn Cestaro runs a farm summer camp at Cheshire Hollow Farm in Cheshire. Her camp allows six campers at a time, and she noticed the same thing Zenko did. The bunnies are a big hit.

“The kids love that they come here for three hours a day and they could just sit with a bunny and be happy,” Cestaro said. “I mean, I could do nothing but give them bunnies to play with and they would be happy.”

Both women said farm camp is a place for kids to come and slow down from their normal routines.

“I find a lot with the kids it’s just like a sigh of relief, like ‘I can just do nothing and relax,’” Cestaro said. “And before COVID, the kids were like going to school and going to baseball practice and going to church and going to here going, going, going — and then when they came here I was just like ‘OK guys, what would you like to do?’ Like, we could just go hold a chicken and sit. These kids just want to relax.”

Cheshire Hollow Farm Camp has themed days. There’s no horseback riding, but there are days focused on hiking in the woods and identifying plants, visiting the farm’s pond to catch frogs and tadpoles and look for turtles, doing arts and crafts, making s’mores around a campfire and participating in a show and tell in which campers can bring their pets from home.

Oh, and the kids get to swim and hang out in the pool.

Because Cheshire Hollow is so small, Cestaro said the camp usually books up by February and that she advertises just by word of mouth.

In her opinion, the best part of farm camp isn’t just seeing how the kids are affected, but also seeing the parents and adults making their own connections with animals and nature.

“My favorite part about all the activities we do on the farm is just getting people out into the environment and with animals. The animals are very therapeutic, I find, to people, and it’s nice to see the connection and to have people realize the connection that they can have with the animals,” Cestaro said.

“I have a couple of ducks and I go into the chicken coop, and I’ll bend down and a duck will fly up and I’ll catch it every time. And then I bring it out and I let people pet the duck and I have so many adults who are like ‘oh my god, I’ve never touched a duck.’”

Farm camp does seem to make an impression. Zenko said that some of her campers come back in the future as counselors.

Hannah Amber is a sophomore at Masuk High School in Monroe, and she is one of those campers-turned-leaders. She started going to camp when she was 8, became a counselor as soon as she could at 14 and has been volunteering at the farm for two years now.

“I’ve been volunteering there ever since I could, and I go even outside of camp just to help out. I love going there, you know? It really makes you happy being there, helping with all the animals and being with the kids,” Hannah said.

She was there that summer day when the crawfish shed its exoskeleton in the hands of another counselor and all the campers gathered around to see it. She said she’s looking forward to that kind of excitement again at camp this summer.

Down by the riverbed, basking in the sun, letting the time go by before a chorus of voices begs – yet again – to go sit with the bunnies.

sarajane.sullivan@hearstmediact.com, @bysarajane on Twitter