<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" When I told my daughters that we were going to spend Memorial Day weekend sleeping in a tent, milking cows, and cooking our meals over a wood-burning stove on an organic farm, 9-year-old Bellamy said, &amp;quot;Cool! Can I bring my DS?&amp;quot; I explained that there would be no video games, no computers, and no TVs. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;ll be just like when you studied pioneers in school!&amp;quot; I said with perhaps a little too much forced enthusiasm. &amp;quot;Okay,&amp;quot; Bellamy responded, &amp;quot;as long as I can play on your iPhone.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ll admit I was a bit nervous about this &amp;quot;back to the land&amp;quot; thing. I like nature in theory, but I do not like to sleep in it. So why the urge to rough it? Well, I&amp;#039;d noticed that my family had become overly dependent on our electronics connections at the expense of our human attachments. After dinner and homework, Bellamy and her 7-year-old sister, Molly, would typically play on the computer or watch a rerun of iCarly while I&amp;#039;d log onto Facebook and my husband, Jeremy, would check his email. Sitcom laugh tracks and the whir of the computer had replaced lively conversation as the dominant sounds in our house. So when I heard about Feather Down Farms, a company that offers &amp;quot;back-to-basics&amp;quot; family vacations on three farms in the United States, I jumped at the chance to detox from our high-tech lives and reconnect with one another.  On a sunny Saturday morning, we drove for three hours from New York City to Stony Creek Farm, in Walton, NY (with the kids watching a DVD in the backseat--hey, I&amp;#039;m no masochist!). When we arrived, it was hello, country life, as one of the owners, Kate Marsiglio, helped us load our bags into a wheelbarrow, which Jeremy then pushed across a footbridge, over a gurgling creek, to our tent. Actually, that tent was more like a cottage with walls that happened to be made of canvas. The master bedroom had a double bed with fluffy duvets; a second room had bunk beds, though the girls chose the &amp;quot;canopy bed&amp;quot; hidden in a cupboard over a storage space. There was even an indoor composting toilet (low-tech, yes, but it got the job done). As soon as we unloaded our stuff, Bellamy and Molly went with Kate to gather eggs for our lunch--and by gather I mean pluck them right from under the chicken&amp;#039;s bottom. Any fears I had that my girls would have trouble adjusting to the slower pace of farm life were dispelled as they rolled down the grassy hill outside our tent and mooed at the milking cow who grazed nearby. &amp;quot;Mom, this farm is awesome--can we live here?&amp;quot; Molly asked.   For me, one of the most refreshing aspects of our stay was the lack of a schedule. We did what we felt like, when we felt like it. Jeremy spent an hour or so showing our daughters his secret method for roasting marshmallows. We drove to a local farmer&amp;#039;s market, tasting banana bread and homemade ginger ale. We cooked a stew over a campfire and ate it by candlelight, with each of us talking about our favorite moments of the weekend. And the girls never once asked to play on my iPhone or grab the DVD player. Instead, they devised their own activities, such as building a teepee out of firewood. Of course, it wasn&amp;#039;t all paradise: Bellamy simply could not get used to all the bugs, and Molly had a knack for stumbling into both the creek and the cow patties, making me very glad that we&amp;#039;d packed several extra pairs of pants and shoes. Overall, though, it was liberating to be so unplugged.  I&amp;#039;d love to say we came home completely changed, gave away our TV, and started growing organic food on our windowsill, but when we returned, I happily re-embraced my blow-dryer and corner Starbucks. We also went back to our wired conveniences, but they seem less important now--I still enjoy Facebook, but I don&amp;#039;t feel compelled to update my status several times a day, and the girls haven&amp;#039;t picked up their DS once since we&amp;#039;ve been home.  As we drove home from Feather Down, I realized something: In the back of my mind, I hadn&amp;#039;t only been worried about roughing it; I had also been afraid that without our usual distractions, my family might not know how to relate, that we might get bored being by ourselves. I was grateful to see that we found one another to be excellent company. Yes, the girls loved milking the cow and feeding the chickens, but the moments I&amp;#039;ll remember most were snuggling together at night and talking about fairies as we looked at the stars. Luckily, we don&amp;#039;t need a farm to do those things every day--just a remote control with an &amp;quot;off&amp;quot; button.  Get Away to a Farm Near You \u2022Feather Down Farms (featherdown.com)  Check out one of these three working farms: Stony Creek Farm in Walton, NY; Ambrosia Farm in Bridgewater, NY; and Kinnikinnick Farm in Caledonia, IL. Rates range from $189 to $229 per night for a tent that sleeps up to six people.  \u2022PA Farm Vacation(pafarmstay.com) Plan a vacation at one of nearly two dozen farms in Pennsylvania that raise everything from alpaca to rabbits to horses. Accommodations range from rooms in farmhouses with shared baths to spacious family suites; rates vary by farm. \u2022FarmStayUS.comUse this site to plan a back-to-the-land getaway within a short drive of your home. You&amp;#039;ll find hundreds of farms, from Maine to Hawaii, that offer vacations built around fresh food, animal care, and plenty of relaxation. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/advice/a6367/unplugged-vacation/>