Our mini-donkeys are stars in this video!

 

Multi-talented book author, blogger, podcaster, and videographer, Laura Camby McCaskill, came to visit us on Our Tiny Farm last summer. She creates wonderful videos on animals, especially those in rescue and sanctuary situations. She heard about our "mini-donkey visit fundraiser" for Veterans Healing Farm and asked if she could do a video on Our Tiny Farm. Of course I said yes, so here is a link to her wonderful video on our donkeys which was released on November 1:

As for those donkey visits, our plan was to offer them as an agritourism business, but it has been a real learning experience on what all that entails. Structuring the business, finding affordable insurance, figuring out how to fit this into our already busy lives, and crunching the numbers to make sure it can be profitable for us but affordable for our guests has been a big effort. So, we are not ready for paying guests! I will let you know if we decide to move forward with it as a business.

 

 

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!

Visiting the Donkeys

 

In response to the lovely article in AVL Today about our donkeys, we need to set some times and rules for visiting the donkeys. Please keep in mind, that we are just offering this as a fundraiser for Veterans Healing Farm and educational opportunity on Our Tiny Farm. We are in the beta testing phase to see if this is a good fit for us and the donkeys in the long run.

Presently, we will welcome visitors on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays only (with the exception of these Saturdays: March 19th, May 14th, May 21st, June 25, July 23, Sept. 24th and the month of October). You must make an appointment at least one day in advance! Please contact us through the contact form in the right sidebar or through ourtinyfarmnc@gmail.com. We might schedule several groups together but will try to not have more than five or six people here at a time. Visits are for an hour.

Dress for being outdoors and on a farm. We do not have a public restroom (we will handle urgent needs, but try to use the restroom before you arrive). Safety is our primary obligation to you and the donkeys, so we will assess each visitor situation to determine how best to have you interact with the donkeys. For example, if you have young children, we will probably separate the donkeys and let the children visit with one donkey on a halter and lead. There are electric fences, poop, mud, dust, and everything else that you would expect to encounter on a farm. There will be hand sanitizer, and a washing station when its warm enough, available that you will be asked to use; especially the children. Please do not feed the donkeys anything except what we provide to you. If it rains, we will meet in the barn. 

Currently we are requesting $10 per visitor which will be donated to Veterans Healing Farm.

Six Little Donkeys on Our Tiny Farm

 

It has been a while since I posted on our blog, so thought I would spend some time on this sunny,  Friday afternoon in February to catch up. As I mentioned last October, we had two new little donkeys join our herd. These are two beautiful true miniature donkeys. They are about three years old and just as sweet as can be. One is white with black spots. Her name is Pickles; she's the one on the far left in the photo above. The other one is a brown-grey and her name is Waffles; she is the second from the left in the photo above. They are now very much a part of the herd, and in fact, Waffles is the alpha jenny. In other words, she's the boss!

Interest in our donkeys continues to grow. We receive more inquires, questions, and comments about them every month. Today we had a journalist from Asheville come out to do a story on the donkeys. It was heartwarming to see the joy on her face when those six little donkeys gathered around her for pets and treats. We should probably give some serious thought to adding an agritourism element to Our Tiny Farm!

We did get a good snowfall last month, with 14 inches measured on the farm. It was very cold and blustery, so five of the donkeys wore their colorful winter coats (i.e., blankets) for a few days. We were a little concerned about Pickles and Waffles because they had just moved here from California and had never experienced real cold weather before. There was no need to worry, they did just fine.

But the snow was new to the new donkeys. The photo above was taken right after Waffles was let out of the barn and when bounding out into the snow for the first time. The look of surprise on her face was precious!

It was a very pretty snow that stayed around much longer than usual for our area in the southern mountains of western North Carolina.

We have had remarkable sunrises and sunsets for months. I don't know why they are so vibrant right now, but I am enjoying it. The sunrise above was on Christmas eve morning.

In addition to our little herd of donkeys, we have a trio of lively and entertaining cats who bring us joy and laughter every day. This box is now a permanent fixture on the table for "the queen".

And now I am going to sign off and give some serious thought to "mini-donkey agritourism"!

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!