By David Van Etten

Volunteers who lead farm tours at Hidden Villa give as much as they get, and they get a great deal. “We experience just as much out here,” said former tour guide Rick McAulay, “as the kids do.”

What they experience at Hidden Villa is a dream of rural yesteryear mixed with a vision of a sustainable tomorrow. McAulay and his fellow volunteers in the Environmental Education Program share the experience with 200 children each day, from all income levels and ages in schools throughout the Bay Area, adding up to 20,000 children each year.

“You can’t transform a child’s life in one and a half hours,” said Assistant Program Coordinator Garth Harwood, “but you can sure affect it.”

The farm tours function primarily to introduce children to nature, best learned through the nose, so to speak. Hidden Villa brings its school groups back to their senses. They taste peppermint leaves, paint faces, impersonate bees, and crawl through overgrown gourd vines in the garden, all truly hands-on lessons.

The fun and games are matched with hard science fit for young minds. “You could say ‘photosynthesis’ to a preschooler,” said Harwood. “Or you might say, ‘These plants turn sunlight into sugar.’ Wouldn’t we all like to do that?”

While plants offer lessons in growth, the compost heaps teach the truths of decomposition. Children get to stick a thermometer in the different heaps and test which one is creating the most energy.

Smells and science aside, the farm animals are the star attractions at Hidden Villa, hands-down. Getting close and interacting with a woolly sheep, a fly-swatting cow, or a milk-giving goat goes beyond words.

Hidden Villa exists to reconnect Santa Clara Valley with its rural roots. In one and a half hours, children achieve a stronger sense of where their meat, greens, paper, wool and everyday products come from - and perhaps how their parents or grandparents lived.

When Frank and Josephine Duveneck opened their farm up after Earth Day in 1970, they hoped to help re-establish those connections. Since the Duvenecks passed away, the farm has continued on in a trust, managed for the special purpose of educational non-profit tours.

As previous volunteers attest, nothing compares to the experience of helping children make the connection between their everyday world and its roots. “When they see the first carrot pulled from the ground,” said McAulay, “that’s really something.”

Hidden Villa welcomes farm-tour volunteers for the new school year. If interested, readers are encouraged to attend orientation, hear about the program’s background philosophy, and participate in a hike 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Saturday, meeting in the visitors Welcome Center.

For more information, visit www.hiddenvilla.org or call Garth Harwood at 949-8643.