Celebration of Living Gifts

This past weekend was the Celebration of Living Gifts at the farm! It was a rousing success. We had over 500 people come out and raised about $6,700 in animal gift donations. We had all our types of animals in the barn for people to see. We had goats and sheep and rabbits and chickens inside.

Pigs, llamas, alpacas, water buffalo, and a cow and calf outside.

Sam and Elizabeth stood outside on Sunday to answer people's questions.

And Ivy stood inside and did the same. She also held various small animals (like this guinea pig) so folks could pet them.

Everything was decorated.

Do you like the cow at the tope of our tree?

However, some of our decorations were edible.

Tilly pulled this down completely.

So we made her wear this hat and she became the belle of the farm.

We had this little area where folks could get their picture taken with the animals.

That's what Liz Jo did all weekend.

And we got a picture of all of us!

We also had a lot of other activities. We had a bake sale.

There was a tractor-pulled hay ride.

Jason and Susan were down in Poland making cards, ornaments, and other paper crafts.

And I was down in Guatemala making rooster ornaments. It was very cold in the house built for the Land of Eternal Springtime. (The stairs were for the hay ride wagon.)

But Jen and I lit a fire and got cozy. We colored a lot of sample roosters.

Aren't they cute??? Jen's is the creative one; mine is the boring brown one.

We also had a fire going outside with sticks and s'more making stuff. It led to a very long philosophical discussion about what came first: the marshmallow or the puffy jacket.

And there was gingerbread cookie decorating. They were all animal shaped.

I made this goat for Jen. I was going for realism, obviously.

At the end of the day, Liz Jo and Chris counted up the totals and updated the tally of animal donations on the window behind them.

It was a very successful, fun weekend, and now the Fall season is officially over. Folks were leaving for good all week, and I actually came home myself last night, but only for a couple of weeks. More thoughts on those lovely, wonderful people with whom I shared my Fall coming later, but this is probably long enough for now. Talk to you soon!