Wimpole Farm

We visited another National Trust property today, this one in Cambridge, and much-admired by the under-6 set. It's a sprawling estate, with a house for touring and manicured gardens, but the big draw is the farm, which, if you can get over the major threat of hoof and mouth disease (sanitizing stations at every turn), it's a super landscape: tractors for straddling, a piggery, hatchery (meet your Thanksgiving dinner!), cows and donkeys and ponies, you name it.

Charlotte and Harry got to pet a turkey chick. Great fun until you realize the same Turkey will be up for sale come the holidays when the farm offers you a chance to pick and pluck your dinner. While I have no problem with the idea (I might even do it), this kind of get-to-know-you, now-I'm-going-to-eat-you dogma wouldn't fly at the National Zoo.

I loved the farm and I'm sure we'll go back many times. But I am also starting to realize how lucky we were to have the free and low-cost entertainment options available to us in Washington courtesy the Smithsonian Institution. We have paid 80 pounds for a family membership to the National Trust, and it does afford us free parking to its many properties, but it does not mean free admission to things like the farm. Instead we get heavy admission discounts, but still, you pay. So, short of walking through a grassy field, everything here costs (a lot).