The Farm Day field trip that local second-graders got to take last week, and that more will be taking next month after a weather postponement, is hands-down one of the best field trips we have ever heard of.

The second-graders who attended Farm Day got to pet animals like goats, cows and llamas, hold a Madagascar hissing cockroach, see a demonstration on how to milk a cow, make their own bag with a soybean plant that will germinate, learn how cotton is processed into clothing and learn how barometers and other weather instruments work.

As if that weren’t enough, they even got a sweet treat with “edible soil,” with layers of vanilla wafers, chocolate pudding, sprinkles, gummy worms and crushed Oreos representing layers of soil and organisms living in it.

All in all, Farm Day sounds like a pretty fun day to us. The students probably don’t even realize they’re learning stuff for their Standards of Learning tests and reinforcing information taught in the classroom, what with all the fun things going on.

Many parts of Suffolk are rural, but there are still second-graders at many of the city’s elementary schools that have never had the chance to go to a farm before or to see firsthand where their food and clothing come from.

Farm Day is an exciting opportunity for these youngsters to learn not only information they will need for future tests but also information they will need for life in general. They may be inspired to become a farmer or a protector of agriculture or maybe just to start their own home garden and grow their own food.

Whatever happens, Farm Day is an excellent opportunity to cheer about. Suffolk Public Schools, the Virginia Tech Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center, the Peanut Soil and Water Conservation District and many other organizations and agencies are to be applauded for their efforts.