Piedmont Farm Tour Day One

This weekend, we skipped naps.  I knew it was risky, but it was the weekend for the Piedmont Farm tour and I had been wanting to do this for several years.  During the Piedmont Farm Tour people can get a pass and visit as many of 40 farms that open their doors to the public.  I just knew that the boys would have a great time and get a lot out of it, but since the hours of the tour were from 1-5pm both days, naps would be tricky.

That's okay, we headed out on our adventure after a busy morning on Saturday as 1pm was rolling around.  Everyone was still in fairly good spirits as we arrived at our first farm, Avillion Farms.  Avillion Farms specializes in making yarn from their sheep, goats, and rabbits.  When we walked up we saw two baby sheep at the sign-in table just waiting to be petted.  Everyone, me included, loved them, and I knew we were off to a good start.  We headed in and saw more goats and sheep and their herding dog who was determined to come up to the fence and give the boys kisses.  Then, we headed up to the farmhouse and saw someone doing a yarn spinning demonstration and the bunnies.  The lady holding the bunnies was a bit nervous, and probably rightly so when Benjamin walked up.  "Gentle" is a difficult word for him to learn and he kept wanting to love on the bunnies a bit too much, but the bunnies survived and we moved on to the next farm.

Our next stop was Iron Gate Winery.  You might think this was just a stop for mom and dad, but they also had plenty to entertain the boys.  The first part was the part for the grown ups.  We went on a quick tour of the winery and sat in their tasting room for a little wine sample.  The boys were troopers and got some peach cider and coloring books while we sampled.  In the middle of the tasting, we were all happily sipping our wine when Benny bursts out...MORE...at the top of his lungs.  The whole room cracks up.  He was actually referring to his cider and not the wine, I promise.  After our tasting we hopped on a hayride and toured around the vineyard seeing fainting goats (which unfortunately weren't fainting at the time), chickens, dogs, and cats.  The boys had a great time riding in the haywagon pulled by a tractor.

As we got back in the car, the whole group was getting a bit fussy, so we were glad we had a little bit of a drive before our last farm of the day.  The boys got a little nap and we got a little quiet time on the way up to Sunset Ridge Buffalo Farm.  That's right, a buffalo farm in North Carolina.  We got to go on another hayride and learn how the farmers work with the buffalo which was really interesting.  Handling a 1300 lb. buffalo takes some tricks.  Throughout the hayride people's comments about hte boys would alternate between "they're sooo cute" and "you've got your hands full don't you?"  That's my boys!  At the end of the the tour we actually got to pass by the buffalo and say hi-so much fun.  We bought some buffalo brats and buffalo steak to have later, and the end of our first day had arrived.

Stay tuned to see what happens on day 2!!

 (Ben is determined to feed the baby sheep some grass.)

 (The dog herds some sheep and goats.)

 (Loving on the puppy)

 (Gentle...please!)

 (My boys and I on the hayride)

(Buffalo and their home on the range)