As my long-suffering Facebook friends will know, I have a bee in my bonnet about FarmVille, an online farming game that I find about as undesirable as a genetically modified chicken on my roast dinner. For those of you who aren’t familiar with FarmVille, it involves players (all 82.7 million of them... sigh!) planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and raising livestock. So Facebook members with time on their hands can play simulated farms and, in the process, earn a selection of coloured ribbons (you know, like the one-upmanship that exists with obtaining coloured wristbands at festivals) and send their friends “Mystery White Eggs” or whatever. Maybe I just don’t ‘get it’ but it seems to be that the farmin’ folks can lurk endlessly at their laptops convincing themselves that they’re “going green” and performing a useful function to society / the environment / the planet. But, actually, they’re just wasting time that could be spent planting a flowerbed with pretty daffodils to brighten up the local community instead.

Speaking as a working single Mum of two lively toddlers, I never cease to wonder how all those millions of people have time for the “largest and fastest growing social game ever” (according to Marketwatch, August 2009). There has been a recent anti-FarmVille backlash amongst Facebook users, with groups such as “I don’t want your farm, fish or your Mafia Wars” cropping up. It’s not just FarmVille - other social networking games (including the Mafia and poker-inspired ones) are on the ‘hit list’ amongst Facebook members who don’t want to hear about virtual chickens and people winning gold coins that don’t really exist.

After dwelling on the idea that “people should get out more”, i.e. away from their personal computers, this weekend I set off with family and a good friend to the *real* Farmville – Middle Farm on the A27 near Lewes. The idea was to see some interesting animals up close and personal, including llamas, donkeys, goats, and funny-faced black pigs. My two and three year old boys were, admittedly, more interested in playing on the swings and hay bales than viewing the livestock but my youngest enjoyed feeding hay to the cows. Meanwhile, Mummy strolled around with the digital camera in the hope of snapping animals from ‘amusing’ angles to post on to Facebook to counter all the virtual ones (sad, I know). At one point, an elderly gent who was also visiting Real Farmville looked surprised to hear Mummy repeatedly “oinking” at a pig in the hope that it would look directly at the camera. Perhaps Mummy needs to stay at home more often. Ahem.

Fresh air, peacocks, organic produce and a well-earned cuppa in the coffee shop afterwards (OK, so my choice of scone had run out, ah well). Why on earth would an able-bodied adult want to sit indoors fertilising crops in cyberspace and trying to buy virtual chicken feed instead?