These days it’s a trip to the farm that is a little more exotic.

That’s why Kathleen Kesselring started the Amazing Acres Farm camp at her Holly Springs home three years ago.

She wanted to give the area’s suburban kids a chance to experience the country life she grew up loving during camping trips in New York.

“There’s so much that’s significant on the planet besides ourselves,” Kesselring said.

Those things can be seen on the eight acres that stretch mostly in front of her home close to the N.C. 55 bypass.

While her farm harkens to Holly Springs’ past — goats, chickens, turkeys and pigs find a home there — the farm butts up to a piece of Holly Springs’ future: a large subdivision.

Kesselring says the neighbors don’t mind.

The kids who come to the farm are often from similar suburban neighborhoods, kids who know more about video games than farm animals.

The kids who come to the farm come from schools and other groups and while at the farm do simple chores around the place, such as taking care of the animals and the small garden.

And these days, with several area schools on nontraditional calendars, the farm is busy just about year-round.

On a recent teacher workday Kesselring was hosting a group of about eight children for the day.

They were busy feeding pygmy goats — really small goats — beneath the hot spring sun.

Kindergartener Damion Younts, 5, loved the pygmy goats “because they’re so cute.”

Then the group, which had already spent the morning tending plants, moved on to see Charlie, a duck whose bill was damaged from a run-in with one of the farm’s pot-bellied pigs.

Charlie’s bill had healed long ago, but Kesselring still held him protectively while she told the kids about how his webbed feet helped him move quickly through the water.

Most of the farm’s lessons are hands on. Not only is it fun for the kids to pet the animals and touch the plants they are learning about, it makes them retain the information better, Kesselring said.

Three kids who have retained the information really well are Kesselring’s sons, Jack, Brian and Matt, who often help teach at the camps.

“I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with speaking to people,” said Jack, a sophomore at Holly Springs High School.

Mostly though it’s Kesselring’s show and her passion.

The 40-year-old moved the family from Cary specifically to start the farm.

She didn’t grow up on a farm herself, but each summer her family would leave their Staten Island home and go camping in the mountains.

She loves being outdoors and in nature and her little farm in a way is like coming home.