Pre-school Farm Tour and more...

Every year for many years, we have hosted school groups touring the farm. We started back in 1970, I think, when we lived the other side of Salem on 9 acres... with goats and horses and a donkey. We moved here in 1977 and have had mostly pre-school groups visiting every year since. This year the children were able to pet baby goats, horses, a llama and throw feathers in the air for swallows to catch and take to their gourd nests. I only managed to take a few photos, all of the children in the group I was leading. (We divided the kids into three groups.) I enlisted friends to help.

Here friend Mary supervises the baby goat petting area.

While waiting their turn to pet the baby goats, children fed the big goats willow branches that another friend, Matt, had cut for them. He was also responsible for taking them to pet big Mister McCoy, the livestock guardian dog. Matt's mom, Bev, was the goat area organizer, directing people to the goat petting area or the dog petting area.

I did not manage to take any photos of children petting horses, where yet another friend, Susan, was in charge of teaching them safe ways of approaching horses and supervising the petting and brushing. Many thanks to all of them plus friend and neighbor Claudia, who was the leader of one of the three groups of children.

The feather-throwing activity was a big hit, as always. The swallows enjoy it, too.

 Johnny was responsible for another group, plus the feather area, and helping the kids feed bamboo to the llama, although here it looks like my group is feeding bamboo to Johnny!

It was exhausting getting the farm ready for our young visitors but all went well and they had fun.

Although we have had light rain off and on, it did not rain much at all for the pre-school farm tour, or the next day, when I took some time to recover and take photos while it wasn't raining.

Mr. Smith is just visible at far left

Jessie Anne and Nightingale

Rhododendron in full bloom

Inside is colorful, too, with orchid cactus blooming in the jungle room...

And a mini orchid opening mini blooms in the kitchen...

And now it's back to weeding and bird surveys on the coast, once the rain stops again.

One of the other school related things we do here is donate Barn Owl pellets to two different teachers. One of them sent photos of the results recently. How cool are these??

Thank you, Mrs. Bachmeier's Newberg class!