The Know Your Farm Tour this past Sunday was a rip-roaring success! It rained that morning and sometimes it was heavy rain and Wally and I fully expected that very few people would show up. We were wrong! We had over 100 people visit! That was amazing! Everyone was so interested in how we raised our animals, particularly the rabbits and they loved watching Gel work. Poor Gel! He gets so excited having visitors and then the added pressure I put on him asking him to work with precision, using whistles, about burned his brain out!
Our new dog, Shine, is doing wonderfully! At first, she was scared of the people, but she soon relaxed and had a good time too.
Ted, Buckwheat, Nettie and Birdie (cats) were engaging! I have a long line attached to Shine and the cats, especially Birdie, had a wonderful time chasing the string, much to Shine’s dismay (she’s afraid of the cats). She’ll get used to them!
I wish I had 20 rabbits processed and ready for sale as I could have sold them, but alas, I had none! I was going to do them Friday morning, but that didn’t happen; then I was going to do them Saturday afternoon and that didn’t happen; then Sunday morning, nope! Now it’s going to rain over the next couple of days so they are not going to get done. I still hate killing rabbits!
Our good news is still hanging … hopefully we’ll get it today and hopefully it will be good news!
Unfortunately, I did not have my camera on me during the tour, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to take photographs. I was too busy telling people about the farm.
I hope people understand that this farm is in its infancy. We CANNOT grow too fast! If that happens, we will loose quality! There are only so many rabbits that we can raise at a time and do it right. Plus, rabbits do not breed in the summer. We took 30 rabbits to be processed the beginning of August and we do not have many available now for processing. We’ll have a decent sized batch ready in a month or so, then we’ll have a lull. Hopefully we have a good number of rabbits bred, but it takes 16 to 20 weeks for them to get to size. Believe me, it’s worth the wait! Luckily, to my knowledge, Wal-Mart does not sell rabbits so you can’t get them there and even if they did, rest assured, they will not be pastured.
One of the Know Your Farm Tour’s directors came to the tour and was very pleased with how many people visited us. He said that we had a perfect mix of attractions. He really enjoyed watching Gel work. Hopefully by the next tour in May, I’ll have Shine and maybe Gel’s grandson, Gus, working to some extent to take some of the pressure off Gel.
I had originally planned to keep Gwen up here last night so I could milk her in the morning, but given that it’s supposed to rain, a lot, I decided to let her stay down there for a few more days. She’s not going to be happy staying up here, but she needs to pull her weight, at least to some extent. I want to get the goats dried off for the season and we need her milk.
Hopefully, some of the people who took a lot of photographs while they were here will share them with me and I’ll post them as soon as I get them.
Until later …