Sunday, April 10, 2011

Farm Tour

A while ago a homeschool mom about 1-1/2 hours away asked Jonathan if he could provide her with 2 dozen fertilized chicken eggs.  He agreed, and when the time was close to pick up the eggs she sent an email and asked if she could bring along some friends to tour the farm. 

Last Thursday 59 people drove over for a farm tour!

The weekend before we had a storm that dumped about 10 inches of very wet snow on top of very muddy conditions.  The tour day was very warm -- probably in the 50's (we still don't have an outside thermometer!), and created very sloppy road conditions.

All the vehicles parked on the gravel road and Jim drove them up in the back of the pickup truck which was filled with straw. 


At least the children enjoyed the sloppy, slippery ride!  Some people opted instead to walk up the quarter mile driveway.

Jonathan converted the front of our old semi trailer to a brooder for his 100 Rhode Island Red chicks which arrived by mail a week earlier, and that was everyone's first stop.

It took a while to get the tour going, since the younger children thought it great fun to play in the snow and mud!  I guess I've forgotten what it's like to live with concrete sidewalks and paved roadways and no mud to be found.

I've never seen lines forming on our farm to check out the animals!


The chicks would have had too many temperature fluctuations if the actual door to the brooder was opened, so everyone had a look from the window in its door. 

The chicken coop was another stop.   Peter picked up a hen and let anyone that wanted to give it a pat.  I don't think the chicken was too thrilled. 

Down in the main barn the children (have to be careful not to call them kids, since we have some of those as well!) were introduced to Sandy and Della, our dairy cows.  Milkah the calf got her bottle while some of them were checking out the cows.


It was great fun to hold one of our new goat kids.

After everyone had sloshed through the mud and seen all the animals (forgot to take a photo of the tour meeting our pigs) the Bartlett Farm provided refreshments.

Hopefully a good time was had by all and their moms were successful in getting the mud stains out of their clothes.


Some people elected to take our very muddy driveway back down on foot.

Thanks to Karin for organizing the tour and enabling us to meet a bunch of very special families.   Thanks as well for some of these photos.  I was also thrilled they took 2 of our kittens! 

6 comments:

Marci said...

Looks like you had a nice tour.

Kelle at The Never Done Farm said...

Wow! a few friends, hate ot see what a bunch of friends would have been, LOL!*wink*

Looks like fun was had by all. It was most likely something that many of the small children will ever forget, Bless you for agreeing to let them come for the farm tour.

Mud is our middle name too, although with our sany soil and the wind today I won't stay that way for long.

Blessings,
Kelle

David said...

Hi Marci,
I'm thankful the families had well-behaved children, and we had no problems with the animals. This was the first time David's horse was around so many people, and she became very animated and ran around the fence, kicking up her heels. It looked like she enjoyed the people, too.

Well, Kelle, wish we had sandy soil. Our base is clay and it takes a LONG TIME to dry it out.

Lynn Bartlett said...

OOPS! I wrote my comment under David's account!

Cora Beth said...

WOW! That was quite a group of people! :) I think it's so fun to show city/town people our life on the farm and to watch the amazement grow on their faces as we move from pen to pen to pasture....

I hope you received the sunshine that we did today and that it helped dry up some of your mud! Our entryway looks like we haven't cleaned it in a month, when in reality, we just swept and scrubbed it on Friday!

The K. Family said...

Very nice! I love to see anybody visiting farms! Looks like everyone had a great time and I think the mud will be just another fun part of it!