Cassius told me he wanted to work with animals. He specified that he didn’t want to listen to someone talk about them – he wanted to do something with them. When the opportunity to volunteer at UBC Farm came up I jumped at it. Chicken are animals right! Cassius was very excited.

First we had to attend the volunteer training. I was surprised that there was only only one other kid there. The rest were all adults. The training took around two hours and Cassius was great. I carried Paris was on my back the whole time. The only thing he was interested in was the tractor.

There were so many volunteers, that we have only got two shifts so far. When we arrived for the first day Cassius said he was nervous. I admitted I was too and I said that it’s normal to be nervous when you’re doing something new.

We found 5 eggs! We broke one-oops! We decided not to go up to the house for boots, which was a mistake. We were both soaked up to the knees afterwards because the grass was so long and wet. One of the chickens had a bleeding wing ( from being clipped) so we ended up going to the house anyway to tell someone. Then we found out we didn’t have to wash the eggs yet because there weren’t enough yet.

We learned our lesson, next time we up to the house first. Good thing too, because we found out the water had flooded and been turned off.

Cassius found 32 eggs (one broken). You have to stick your hand under the chickens to get the eggs – and they only let you if you’re nice to them. Cassius didn’t have any trouble at all.

we found five eggs the first day