Road trip!

Well Saturday I went on my first ever road trip with the donkeys. I left my house at 6:30 in the morning, I knew I had to drive a little bit slower as normal as it was still pitch black and I was sure the country back roads would be even darker and a critter heaven. So I took my time and still got there a few minutes before the planned meeting time. The DSC was still in darkness. I saw shadows of donkeys out in the fields by the hay feeders, I spotted Cocoa and Hershey playing (sorry that I forgot to tell you that in my email, Joan) on the hill, now Hershey being way smaller than Cocoa had the slight advantage when it came to the ankle biting, but they had a great ole time tagging each other and trying to get to each other. So I stood there and watched them for a while.Of course there is always one nosey donkey who has to check out who arrived at the parking lot...and it was this guy....

The rest of our travel team got there by 7:30 and we started packing the car with all our displays and all the things we needed for the day. The trailer was already hitched up and it was time to get our precious cargo. Originally we were suppose to take Trooper and little Paco, but since Paco had some chiropractic adjustments done two days before and was still a little bit cranky and needed more rest, so we ended up taking the three amigos, Sable, Pansy and Poppy.

They were very easy to load up into the trailer and we were ready to say good-bye. To my surprise Cate was there for the day, so I was sent of with a hug from her and shortly after eight we were on the road. Our destination was McCully's Farm just by St. Mary's, about an hour and a half long trip with a trailer in tow. The drive was interesting, Ruth was sitting in the back, since she had some work on her laptop to do, so I was upfront with Kim. Now Kim is a non-stop teacher of things, which I absolutely love, because even in a normal conversation you always learn something from her. She gave me all the ins and out of driving with a trailer, I learnt a little bit more about her and she about me and the drive went by in no time at all. We arrived at Mc Cully's at 9:30 am, swamped their goats into a different pen, unloaded our donkeys into the goat pen and set up our display inside a tent. It was all so much easier than anticipated. My position was away from the two of them up the hill by the pumpkin catapult. Mc Cully's Farm runs a Fall Festival on the four weekend in October, and every Saturday during that festival they organize the Great Canadian Pumpkin Toss for Charity, all the proceeds made on those Saturdays will then be divided among the four Charities as donation. I drove up to the hill on the tractor to get to my position, my job was really easy, I just had to tell the people that arrived per tractor trailer at the catapult about the charity and what we are all about and then just get their wagers for their guesses on the distance for the pumpkin toss, whoever won, got a magnet and the money was ours. :) Real simple and even for me not that hard to explain and I don't like taking in front of groups. There was about a 20 minute interval between each group, as it wasn't that busy to begin with, because the weather wasn't exactly great.I had the best coworkers though and I spent pretty much all day just doing my five minute "spiel" when the groups arrived and then just petted and cuddled animals. There was Francesca the cow and her calf Chase, Dex, the horse and Millie, the miniature donkey. Millie of course stole my heart right away, it took me a little while to coaks her to come over to me. but once she was there she didn't leave my side for almost three hours, and I just petted her and petted her and it felt like she never got loved before, she was just snuggling into my elbow as I petted her face and scratched her ears. We shared my apples for lunch and were just sitting around most of the time. Millie didn't strike me as a very happy donkey. Well she is the only donkey with all the horses and cows in the paddock, so of course that creates a lot of problems right there. A. She is lonely. B. She doesn't get the right food and C. nobody seemed to bother much with her. Funny too, now that I have learnt so much about their care and their needs, my first look, whenever I see a donkey, is to check out their hooves, and well Millie's hooves didn't look right to me right from the start. I took a few pictures of them just in case, but I was glad that Ruth came up at one point and came to the same conclusion and later Kim came up to check on Millie. Given, Millie is not that bad off, but being exposed to that kind of rich food and loneliness, it will eventually cause a few problems for Millie. She was an absolute  sweet donkey and well she would have fit right in with our three down in the goat pen. But we can't make any calls like that and on the drive home it was decided that the local Humane Society will be contacted and they will go and check out Millie and give the owners some recommendations on how to fix Millie's starting problems.  And they will hopefully be made right by Millie or we will see Millie one day on our Farm. Let's just hope for the best.The day was long and cool and being up so early we were really tired and ready to go home when it was finally time to do so. The donkeys were happy to be back on their own farm, the first thing all three donkeys did as soon as they got of the trailer and of their leads, was a good roll in the dirt. It was too cute. We unloaded everything, but everything back to were it belongs and then I was on my drive home. Couldn't wait to get into my nice warm fuzzy pyjamas and just sip on a hot chocolate and relax. But all in all it was a very fun day and I enjoyed my time immensely.

View from my position up the hill at the catapult

(our donks, our trailer)

two of our donks...in the goat pen

Kim and Ruth

Dex, Millie, Chase

Francesca was eating every single pumpkin that was tossed

 and she wasn't sharing with anybody, not even with her baby.