Scenes from the Agritourism Festival...

We had a great day at the first annual Shenandoah Valley Agritourism Festival on Sunday at Hermitage Hill Farm! The Festival had a large turnout with over 600 people in attendance!







It was an honor to finally get to meet Joel Salatin when he came by to visit our display.  It was even more exciting to hear him tell us that our farm model is fantastic and that he has never seen one like it! 

The weather was perfect and folks were very interested in learning about our farm and what we do. 

Pat Jarrett/The New Leader

The goats enjoyed being fed branches of autumn olive, honeysuckle, blue weed and privet. 

It is quite different than what most folks are used to when they go to a festival and see goats.

Pat Jarrett/The News Leader

Usually you get a cone with feed in it. Not our goats!  It was a great way to teach kids and adults about the goats natural diet. It also allowed for an up close view to see how their prehensile mouths work to pluck every leaf off of a branch!  

Even the newest addition had to get in on the action!  She wanted to show that at one month old she can forage too!  

Chloe was her normal "stoic" self. She spent most of her time "modeling" as a Pyrenees statue.  She would mosey over for a few rubs every now and then. She was very disappointed the folks were feeding the goats, but not feeding her!  

Our son, Luke was on hand to give out samples of our Autumn Berry Sauce.  We were anxious to get the feedback on our batch of Autumn Berry Spicy Sauce and folks gave us a thumbs up!  All agreed that it was not too hot just a little warm!







Here is a link to The News Leader article about the festival.  You can see more pictures and learn about the festival.  Hope to see you there next year! 

Our Boer Bok have gone to school and the school has gone green....

The A-Team has gone to school at Hugh Cassell Elementary School. The school has gone green and the green is getting gone!

Looking east toward Turk Mountain on the Skyline Drive

It is a surreal feeling for Clay every time he goes to check the herd. This was part of his original family farm and he can remember hunting ground hogs and making hay in the fields where our Boer Bok are. Who would have ever dreamed that we would have 184 Boer Bok from our herd grazing this land 40 years later?  

The views from the top of the hill are stunning!  This is looking northeast at the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.  

This site has a stand of walnut trees for shade. Clay remembers these being big when he was a little boy. 

It also has concrete pads. The Boer Bok love to climb and play on these! 

They are enjoying this gorgeous weather!

Chloe likes it here as well! She checking the wind for smells of a threat or out of the park balls from the baseball fields.. 








We will be doing a presentation for the school kids next week.  The kids and staff are excited about the "foreign exchange students" that are attending their school.  We are excited to be able to teach a young generation about these beautiful animals, sustainable farming and biological control methods of invasive plants and weeds!  Those are a lot of big words to learn for young kids! 

The scent of Romeo...

Clay and I were doing our evening herd check and noticed that the does were super affectionate.  They were crowding all around us and leaning into us to be petted and rubbed. Even the does who usually don't want to have anything to do with us were behaving this way. It seemed a bit odd to see this over affection they were displaying.  

Romeo

Then it occurred to Clay why they were behaving that way.  Prior to checking the does we checked the bucks and noticed that Romeo needed his hooves trimmed.  Needless to say that when you trim his hooves you have to touch him and when you touch him his "essence" gets on you.  Yes, the girls smelled the scent of Romeo.  "O Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?" is what they were saying.  Not to worry, they will get to see him and our other buck, The Hardy Boy in about a month.  That will be too much to blog about!   

The Band of Bucks - "Skipper", "Romeo" and "The Hardy Boy"

"The Hardy Boy" and "Romeo"

Scenes From Kite Day...

Kite Day Coyner Springs, Waynesboro VA

Kite Day was a great success!  There was wind and the kites were flying high.  It was a beautiful site seeing the goats with the kites flying in the background. 

Kite Day Coyner Springs, Waynesboro VA

We did not know how they would react to the kites. They could have cared a less that there was a 50 foot octopus flying in the sky! 

The goats drew quite a crowd. The people really enjoyed seeing them in action and asked a lot of questions.

Of course, the newest member of our herd was a big hit.  

She even put on a little show dancing and prancing around.  

Her mother said enough fun and games!  She took the opportunity to teach some forage skills.  This kid is foraging at 1 week!  What a show off!

Then there was Chloe...  She was a hit when she was awake. She is not used to all of this activity during the day. She works the night shift and sleeps most all day.

"Ho Hum, I'll let them pet me. Just wish they would give me some of that kettlecorn!"

She preferred laying on the hill and looking regal!

Notice Chloe in the background.  This is how she spends most of her days.  

A special thanks to my great nieces Lauren and Maran for helping me give out samples of our Autumn Berry Sauce!

It was great for folks to see the goats foraging on the invasive Autumn Olive plant and then to learn there is a yummy way that THEY could help remove over 5,000 plants from the environment!  Good on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, cheese cake.....

Wild Harvested Autumn Berries

The girls have arrived...

Introducing the newest arrivals to our farm. These two gorgeous girls arrived this morning. They hopefully will be giving us some Thanksgiving entertainment for our guests in the way of piglets.  

We have not officially named them, but I am thinking of Ethel and Myrtle.  We will have to get to know their personalities a little better and it will have to be a unanimous decision or I won't hear the end of it! 

So far they are liking their new digs. They are investigating with caution though. Notice the bristles on the back!  

Eeny, Meeny, Miny and Mo are quite curious about the new arrivals. Hopefully they will make for one big happy hog family! 

When the war on invasive plants is beyond your control it is time to contact....

 

Autumn Olive Farms has biological control agents on staff 27/7.

"The A-Team"

"Your battlefield is their banquet hall"

Fields of Grace....

We are thrilled that we were able to purchase the floor of goats at the Rockingham county fair again this year!  We ended up with 85 of them. 

They were running jumping and playing this morning.  It must have felt really good to get out in an open space and eat green forage after being in the barn all week showing off their handsome selves!  They are such nice animals from good stock. The 4-H and FFA kids did a great job raising them to showcase their potential.  

 The title of this blog post is appropriately named. If we had not gotten them they would not be running jumping and playing this morning. These children's hand raised goats would have been immediately snatched out of their cozy show pens and thrust into the harsh environment of large pens and trailers heading into the brutal and heartless Northeast industrial meat system. Unbelievably that was not the worst possible end result. One particular buyer in our area is actively buying 4H/FFA fair stock at high prices and they would be on their way to medical research programs focused on highly infectious diseases including leprosy research. More likely though is the medical program where these children's pet are partially blown up by the army in a controlled way in order to train medics how to stabilize severe trauma victims of IED and land mine injuries.  With other options available, how could anyone choose to use young children's pets in that way? 


With the very real threat of that being the outcome for the goats in this sale I am afraid we did have both a smart price and a also a "heart" price. Unfortunately for us the sale price was a lot closer to the heart price so we REALLY need to find at least one great forage job for them to earn some income to make it up. 


It is true that most of our stock will one day die to become a very healthy meat product for informed consumers.  Until that final moment though, all the Autumn Olive Farms goat's lives will be good days and filled with all the fascinating antics and details that make the goat uniquely what it is. 
  
In fact, although we have one of the finest meat products that a human can eat we would gladly forgo the meat side of our business if we could afford to keep all of them as full time foragers. That would require us to become Boer Bok snowbirds to Florida! Know anyone in need of our services from November to May in a fine Florida setting?