We decided to go to the Farm Tour this year, last year we wanted to go but we were moving to our new house then! So this year we were excited to see all of the farms in the area and learn about.the farms in the area.
We started out with Stop#9 Triple J Beef & Goat Farm. Cecille wanted to see someone milk a goat - but they don't milk the goats there. They are meat goats. They had a LOT of goats and some of them were huge goats. They also had some donkeys there. The girls had fun herding (chasing) the goats around their pond and back again.
After that, we went to Stop#8 the Little Cruise View Farm, it was a "tree farm" or "mini farm". The owner had a lot of different small animals like us (chickens, duck, turkeys, potbelly pig) and had information on the trees in the area. We all learned about some of the trees. One tree we learned about Sassafras is one we will talk about in a later post!
Then, we went on to Stop#7 Hickory Ridge Farms, they had a hayride and lots of cows around their property. The girls learned about how a cattle chute works by going inside as the cows do.
They also got to sit on their horses before they put them out to pasture. Allix's hand shot up first when he asked if anyone wanted to sit on a horse, so she got up on the first one. Cecille got to sit on the next one. Cecille's horse got spooked by a little kid screaming up the hill, and the horse jumped and took off and she almost fell off - but one of the people there helped catch her before she hit the ground! Needless to say, that didn't scare her, lol! He asked if she wanted to get on the other horse, then realized she wanted back on the first horse, so he put her back on that one. Then, it took off again! This time she held her balance and stayed on until it calmed down. Allix was on the other horse the whole time, and it was calm for her. The owner was surprised that these two girls who had never been on horses before weren't afraid of the big horses.
After that stop, we went on to the next closest one, Stop#6 Poverty Hollow Farm. This stop had a LOT of different kinds of pumpkins for sale. They had a couple of cows in their barn also, and had some good ideas for keeping the feed safe that we took note of. They grow all of their own pumpkins here, and said that they even give some of them calcium injections for different results. They had a problem in the past with pollination of their pumpkin flowers, and decided to start beekeeping near their pumpkin fields and say that it really increased their pumpkins this year. The hives were neat to see with all of the bees flying around - but we didn't get too close!
We met up with our homeschool friends here and painted some pumpkins. Then we decided to go on to the shrimp farm to see what that was all about.
We drove on down the road towards the shrimp farm, and turned in when we saw the tour stop sign. We were pretty confused when all that we saw was wine tasting, so we walked around their barns, and saw how they kept their chickens and potbelly pigs. They also had a donkey and a couple ponies. They also had some Halloween decorations up, they have "Boofest at Redman's Farm" there next month, we thought the huge spiderweb was cool. Sometimes the spiders here are almost that big! We kept waiting for our friends to show up, and were thinking the only way to see the shrimp must be to go on the hayride, but we were tired of hayrides by then! So, we decided to just call it a day and go to the truck.
When we got in the truck, we looked at the map again to see why it was described as a shrimp farm, when all we saw was wine - then we realized we had gone to the wrong stop!
So, we high tailed it to the "correct" stop that we were supposed to be going to - Stop#4 Bluegrass Shrimp and Fish Farm. Our friends we just about to give up on waiting for us when we arrived... they must have some patience, cause we had been at the last stop for quite a while!
The kids thought the shrimp were super cool, but weren't allowed to see them much cause kids had been scooping them up all day... They were some BIG shrimp. The ponds were neat, wish we had some ponds to grow shrimp in here, but we'd just eat them all there wouldn't be any left to sell!
After that, it had been a super long day and the little girls were whooped, so we headed back home for an "easy evening".
Then we brought them in to the basement and got to work on customizing them. We chopped them off with the sawzall to make even bases and shorter tops once we decided whose was whose. The girls had their dad do the carving and chose accessories to go on their sticks from their beads and nature collection.
