The Tucson Village Farm is set to celebrate the grand opening of their new animal education center at this year’s Barnyard Trot on March 7.
“This center has been a dream long time coming. For years and years, people have asked us, ‘Where are your animals? You’re a farm. Why don’t you have animals?’” Sabra Mayer, TVF’s field trip coordinator, said. “We faced some practical challenges in that you need space, you need people, you need staffing, you need programming.”
Climate concerns play a role, too, Mayer explained. They needed to create a space that would be comfortable for both the animals and visitors, which becomes especially important during the summer.
As part of the event, they will introduce their herd of five goats and 24 two-week-old chicks to the community. Other nearby farms will shuttle in sheep and miniature cows for the celebration.
Moving forward, TVF will work to integrate the new center into their programming.
“We’re hoping to have after school programs where kids can come out and help with chores, taking care of the animals and building relationships with an animal that they adopt as their own within the time frame of their program,” Mayer said.
According to Mayer, they plan on starting up caretaking programs, wool workshops and a goat obstacle course. Their big farm is already home to an intricate ropes course for team building exercises. Soon enough, though, the teams will feature four-legged furry friends.
“Now, with the goat obstacle course, you’re not just having the communication challenge of human to human,” Mayer said. “You’re having the communication challenge and skill building experience of communicating with an organism that doesn’t speak human languages.”
In 2014, TVF hosted the Chicken Run event, a prototype to the Barnyard Trot, to raise money for their chicken coop project. In 2024 and 2025, they brought it back to raise money for the large shade structure that made the Animal Education Center possible.
Through the existing chicken coop, they have been able to create an animal caretaking opportunity for their 4-H Health Living Ambassadors.
“There’s a kid in that program who has adopted a chicken, has been building a relationship with his chicken, training this chicken to do all kinds of tricks and things with her,” Mayer said. “And so she’s practicing goal setting and building this relationship and training her chicken to do these different things. And that’s a really good thing for kids to learn — how to set goals and have to stick to them and work on them and the challenges of making some progress and backtracking and working forward again.”
While research on the mental health benefits of being around animals is fairly new, there is evidence that suggests interacting with and caring for animals can reduce stress and anxiety. Other studies have shown a reduction of feelings of loneliness as well as improved mood. With this new addition, TVF hopes to provide more of the community access to the experience of taking care of animals.
“Some kids have pets at home,” Mayer said. “Some kids don’t, and being here in the city, it’s very rare that a kid who lives in the city can have chickens or goats or something like that. There’s a lot of barriers that kids in the city face to having those animal caretaking experiences – whether it be access to land or transportation or knowledge or the finances to be able to support an animal. So this is a space where kids can have those experiences without that burden on their family to have to house and care for an animal.”
Down the road, they plan to expand the center to include sheep.
Other events featured at the Barnyard Trot will include a sourdough pancake breakfast, team challenge course, farm market, plant sale and a community fair featuring partner organizations presentations from Watershed Management Group and NOURISH scholars.
“It’s such a great community opportunity to come out and see the whole farm and see really a smorgasbord of all of our program offerings, and it’s just a lot of fun,” Mayer said. “We try to keep the fun things going.”
This year’s event starts at 9:00 a.m. Entry is free. However, teams competing in the challenge course and those participating in the breakfast must register ahead of time. Registration information can be found here.
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