2026 Update on Our Tiny Farm in Etowah, North Carolina!

 

Yesterday, a friend pointed out to me that it has been a REALLY LONG TIME since I posted an update about the farm and she wanted to know what was going on! So, here is what has transpired from the present back to to September 15, 2024 when I made the last post. The picture above is of our three donkeys this spring. That's PJ on the left, Chester on the far right, and Meadow standing next to Chester. Right now we are not running any kind of business on Our Tiny Farm. We have a large garden, but it is to feed family and friends. People do come to visit the donkeys from time to time, but they come as friends and we ask them to make a donation to one of our favorite local non-profits. A few of them have to come for their "donkey fix" quite frequently! We aren't currently boarding any donkeys, but are available to serve as a temporary home when a family finds their donkeys before they have the shelter and fencing ready for them on their own farms. That happens more often then you would think, and we enjoy mentoring new donkey families.

The farrier comes to visit every few months. He is so very good with the donkeys. Here he is trimming PJ's hooves. PJ is about 16 years old and wasn't fond of getting his pedicures before he moved to Our Tiny Farm, but he seems to appreciate how gentle and calm our farrier is with him. 

PJ moved to Our Tiny Farm last fall. We consider ourselves his stepparents. The family he lived with for most of his 16 years comes to visit him frequently. That's his "real mother" giving him a good brushing this spring. We are all one big happy family now.

This photo is from late February 2026. The three donkeys are a very comfortable little herd now. If you read my post from September 2024, I had mentioned that I thought Chester and Meadow needed another pasture mate!

The three little donkeys wait for me to come out and give them hay and their hoof supplement (I call it breakfast) every morning. They have great internal clocks. If I am more than 15 minutes off my regular schedule, one or more of them will start braying to get my attention.
 

Here they are eating their "breakfast". It is just one ounce of a hoof supplement, but they think it is a wonderful treat.

In late January and early February of 2026, we experienced bitter cold temperatures (single digits) and high winds. We put coats on the donkeys, but one night Chester started shivering and we became very concerned for him. We set up a propane blast heater and took turns sitting there monitoring it with several fire extinguishers right next to us. We might never have to use them, but we are going to order longer coats with belly wraps to have on hand in case this happens again.

It was terribly cold, but so beautiful!

PJ had never worn a coat before and took off running every time we tried to get near him with it, but after experiencing one very cold night without it, and seeing the other two wearing theirs, he finally let us put a coat on him. It made us feel so much better to know that he had some additional protection from the cold.

This is from January 2025. Meadow and Chester love playing with toys, but PJ didn't seem very interested. On this day, he decided to pick up the Jolly Ball and see what he could do with it! Since then, he plays with the others and enjoys traffic cones, pieces of plastic drain pipe, old boots, rakes, brushes, buckets, and just about anything he can pick up with his teeth and carry off!

This is just a pretty shot from December 2025.

This photo if from November 21, 2025 when PJ moved to Our Tiny Farm. PJ had lived with horses his whole life. He had never met another donkey before! He adjusted very quickly, and now we are working to slowly help him lose the weight he gained by trying to eat like a horse!

We feed the birds on the farm and expect the squirrels, raccoons, and opposums to also partake, but we were not expecting the deer to stand on their hind legs and eat the feed, too! We have a very large herd of deer, so we use a pulley system to keep the vulnerable feeders out of their reach.

Just a pretty picture of the farm on a November afternoon. We were enjoying the sunshine and planning how we are going to replant the farm after a microburst in 2021 and Hurricane Helene in 2024 took down almost every large tree on the farm. We are thinking of planting multi-functional windbreaks and many trees with edible fruit and nuts for us and the wildlife.

This is a photo from October 2025. It is always such a good feeling to get the hay put up for the winter. It was a special relief this time because quality hay was scarce after Helene destroyed many fields and barns. 

I just had to share this special photo from a morning in October 2025 with the blue sky, frost on the grass, and fog coming up from the river and hugging the ground. We quit beekeeping after about 25 years, and gave our hives and all of our equipment to a young farmer across the street. Hubby is mentoring him.

Chester on the left and Meadow on the right. It is not unusual to find them standing this way. 

We are always making changes in the farm landscape and brought in some soil to help build up low areas. We had the dump truck put the dirt pile in the small pasture area, and the donkeys love to play on it.

This is Meadow taking a nap on a cool afternoon in September 2025. Meadow and Chester both wear fly masks to keep the little biting gnats out of their ears. We have not been able to convince PJ to wear one yet. 

They love their toys and will make a play thing out of anything you leave unattended, including gloves, tools, spray bottles, manure forks, wheelbarrows...

In June 2025 we were introduced to PJ. This is him in the pasture where he lived most of his life with several horses. The last horse was nearing the end of her life, and his "parents" did not intend to get another horse. They found Our Tiny Farm and asked if we would welcome PJ to our farm. We couldn't say no.

This is April 2025. I had been brushing the donkeys, got up for a few minutes and they quickly took over the stool and the brushes. 

Spring 2025 was very beautiful on the farm. 

As I mentioned earlier, people just love to visit the donkeys and the donkeys love the attention. This was February 2025.

Chester and Meadow look so smart in their colorful winter coats in January 2025.

Donkeys gain weight very quickly, so we limit pasture time to just a few hours each day, weigh out the hay that we feed them, and put the hay in slow feeders. Here you can see the NibbleNet and the hay ball. This is November 2024.

Our farm is surrounded by other small farms. Our neighbors are horses, goats, donkeys, and sheep. This is October 2024.

In October 2024 we experienced a special treat when the Northern Lights were visible in our area! 

This was October 5, 2024 and the damage from Hurricane Helene was all around us. Almost two years later, there are still many roads that are impassable and many people still without permanent homes. We were very fortunate. We lost a lot of trees and we were isolated for many days. But we have a generator and several wells, the pantry is always well-stocked, and we have great neighbors. Everyone came together to cut trees and help each other. The scariest issue for our little group of families was not being able to communicate with anyone outside of our tiny area. So we did not know how our family was just eight miles away, and we could not have called for emergency medical help if it was needed. 

This photo and the ones below are from September 27, 2024. This is what we saw after we emerged from our home after Helene passed through. That is not a river or a lake. That is the large pasture next door. 

 

We lost so many large trees, but we were fortunate. There was no damage to our house or barn, and the damage to the workshop was minimal. So many others suffered catastrophic damage. 

 

Fortunately, we had the equipment to move enough of the downed trees so we could get in and out of the property. It was many months before a professional tree service could come in and remove the others laid flat all over the farm. 

 

The winds knocked all the old windbreaks down, pulling the trees up by their roots.  

This was the warning we received on September 26, 2024. I hope we never experience anything like that again. But, I am glad we live on a farm and are pretty self-sufficient. I am glad that we raised our children to know how to grow abundant gardens, raise chickens and cattle, fix their cars and small equipment, do basic carpentry and plumbing, cook and sew, and have the tools on hand to do these things. You never know when you will need those skills. 

 

Some of the Donkeys Who have Called Our Tiny Farm "home"

 

Over the years we have had many donkeys on the farm; up to six at a time.

The two photos above are of Wilma and Clara. They were the oldest donkeys and lived here for about four years. Recently they moved to a farm near Edneyville, NC.

The photo above is of Faith, the mother, and her newborn, Corey Love. They now live with Faith's daughter, Hope, on a farm nearby.

This photo is of Pickles and Waffles. And this past summer they moved to Washington State!

Temporary Home for Your Donkey

 

This doesn't happen very often, but we will have room for two donkeys, probably in late spring. Two of our donkeys are moving away and our donkeys are happiest in a six member herd. If you have donkeys and they need a home, or if you have wanted to own donkeys but don't have your own place to keep them, here is your opportunity. We are located in Henderson County, North Carolina. Contact us through the Contact Us tab in the right side bar, or email us at ourtinyfarmnc@gmail.com.

Pause in the Mini-Donkey Visits

 

The mini-donkey visit fundraiser we held last spring for the Veterans Healing Farm was a HUGE success, and now we want to consider making mini-donkey visits a real farm business. But we quickly learned that we weren't really prepared to do that. Presently we are working with a local Small Business Center to structure a business and with our insurance company to provide appropriate coverage for our farm and our visitors. Once we are able to accept paying visitors, if we decide to go that route, we will post it here, on our Facebook page, and on our Google Business page. Thank you for your patience.

Plan a Visit with the Miniature Donkeys-A Fundraiser for Veterans Healing Farm

 

The mini-donkey visit fundraiser is over and we are not currently accepting reservations.

The mini-donkey fundraiser for VETERANS HEALING FARM raised $1,650! It was so successful that we are now considering making it a permanent part of our farm. We need a little time to work out the business, tax, and insurance end of things and will let you know as soon as we have made a decision. Thanks for your support!

New Donkeys on Our Tiny Farm

 

We have two new mini-donkeys living on Our Tiny Farm! They arrived here from California in early October.

Their humans are moving to western North Carolina and needed a place for  their precious minis while they find a new home for all of them. Meet Pickles, the white spotted one on the left, and Waffles, the brown one on the right. They are really sweet donkeys, and settled in very quickly. 

We kept them separated in the barn and paddock from our other four until their humans arrived. Then we let them all together. It was rather anti-climatic. Pickles and Waffles on the left and Chester and Meadow on the right, just stared at each other for several minutes. Clara and Wilma didn't even bother to come over. I guess they became familiar enough with each other after nine days of being near each other, that it was no big deal. We are enjoying having a real little herd of minis on the farm.

A Quick Check-In from Our Tiny Farm in Etowah, NC

 

I can't believe that almost six months have flown by since I wrote a post on the Our Tiny Farm blog. You would think with all the COVID restrictions that kept me at home that I would have had plenty of time to write fun posts here. The reality is, working my NC State University job from home can be all consuming! And I am so fried by the time that I am done, that the last thing I want to do is get back on the computer. So here is just a quick update from the farm, focused mostly on donkeys. The picture above is of our dear small standard donkey, Meadow, protectively leaning over the neck of sweet mini-donkey, Chester. We continue to have several other donkeys living on the farm and dote on all of them.

I promised myself and the donkeys that we were going to make a special effort to control flies this year. It breaks my heart to see how the donkeys are tortured by biting flies and midges. So, I hang six strips of fly paper in the barn every month, put out fly predators monthly, put fly masks (with ears) on the donkeys every day, clean up manure in the paddock and barn daily and cart it to the other side of the farm, put fly spray or fly cream on their legs every other day, run the fans in the barn, and this year, I put out two of these Captivator fly traps. As you can see, they do catch a lot of flies! I will let you know how well this time consuming strategy works!

Our donkeys are always up to something new and different. Here is Chester, in his fly mask, proudly standing over the loose salt bucket that he successfully removed from where it was mounted on the wall of the barn. It doesn't matter how large the screws and washers are that we mount it with, eventually he will get it off. So, this time it stays off and can just be another toy for the donkeys.

Donkeys are very smart and easily bored. So we humans have to be very careful to make sure everything is well secured and donkey-proof. And when we get careless, this is what happens! I went out to the barn one afternoon and found the feed room door wide open and a full bale of hay scattered all over the room. Fortunately, this happened during the day when the two biggest trouble makers, Wilma and Meadow, had their grazing muzzles on. Thus, they were not able to get any of the feed cans open (even though they are held shut with bungee cords, I still think, given enough time, Wilma would get into them if she isn't muzzled) or devour enough hay to make themselves sick. 

Many people driving and riding their bikes by the farm stop and look at the donkeys, especially when they are in their summer garb of fly masks and grazing muzzles. Actually, only Wilma and Meadow wear the grazing muzzles. The muzzles slow down their eating so the two donkeys can stay on the pasture longer with their friends, Chester and Clara. Some donkeys are prone to putting on weight very quickly which can be very dangerous for them; thus the grazing muzzles.

Did you know that donkeys are part beaver? Not really, but they do love to chew on wood! In their natural environment, they have lots of shrubby stuff to chew on, but on Our Tiny Farm the donkeys get grass and hay. I do try to throw branches (from safe to eat trees) and bamboo into their paddock from time to time, but chewing on the barn is still a favorite activity. We had the barn wrapped in chicken wire for many years, but it was starting to show its age. So this spring we repaired the damaged boards and wrapped the barn in galvanized wire fencing. That should keep the barn standing for awhile longer!

And after harvesting a bumper crop of honey, Glen has decided to end his beekeeping career. So, until I come up with another idea, our farming efforts revolve around the donkeys.

And that's the quick update from Our Tiny Farm!