All Boy! They loved climbing on the tractors!

Watch out! Stay off the road, here comes Avery!

Just one more visit to the Farm!

We had to come back to the Golden Glen Creamery to get some more free icecream! Well actually that probably had something to do with us coming back to the same farm, but I missed out on the creamery visit due to work on Saturday. So, we paid them a visit again on Sunday afternoon and brought the cousins along.

We met lots of cows, mostly milk cows! (imagine that?!) The farmers had special huts or "dog houses" for the calves. There were only three calves this year.

Usually, Mt Baker can be seen from this view of the farm, but we were having a "grey day" in the Skagit Valley. We get a lot of "grey days" during the season changes, but fall has got to be the prettiest of the season for this area!

Yummy! This was Cameron's favorite part! Free icecream!

The guy here is just cleaning off the butter churner as it turns. Right now the "butter" to be is half n half and the consistency of yougart. It will need to churn a lot longer.

Austin and Cameron search for hidden treasures in the hay. Cameron is trying to do it one-handed so not to get more "flavor" in his icecream!

Salt lick anyone?!

Cameron gets a kiss from the cow! This cow was very social, but I think he was really wanting a salt lick!

The cow thought Jason was a salt lick! Whenever he was petted, he'd slurp out that big long tongue and take a lick!

We found another very social calf, it was so soft and loved people petting him. He kept trying to suck on Austin's shirt! Austin had to change his shirt after that!

Austin (cousin) tries his hand at milking "Squirty Gerty" the cow! It's harder than you think!

We got in on a free hayride, a tour of the farm grounds. Besides dairy products, this farm also harvests hay and corn. This year's corn crop will only yield an estimated 60% due to the long winter we had last year and the limited amount of dry weather in the seasons that followed.

The boys goof off, I think it was all the sugar from the free icecream that they were "tanked" up on. They were pretending to be pigs!

Follow us on our Festival of Family Farms Tour!

Today we set out on a family adventure. Our valley has the family farm festival once a year in October and it's an event we try to make. We set out to tour as many farms as time would allow, so let me take you on a tour of the places we visited today!

We visited the Taylor Family Shellfish Farm first. We got to sample some shellfish, play with critters and even have a crab race. We really enjoyed this unique type of farm!

Here are some ways they catch the crabs. . . .

The boys inspect the oyster harvesting machine. There are lots of oyster beds in the bay and the shellfish farmers harvest them much like a produce farmer brings in his harvest! We've hiked up the mountain behind this farm and can plainly see the oyster beds from up above. It looks like a regular dirt farm! The tide was in and high, so we couldn't see the "farm".

The Oyster farmers are busy at work and making samples for everyone to try. The guy to the left is busy shucking live oysters for people to eat, raw with a squirt of lemon! I prefer it cooked!!!

The crabs stay in these tanks until they're sold I guess! One is trying to escape, we were cheering him on!

Free Samples!!!!

Oysters on the barbie! Free samples! Yeah Mom, they really were free! I checked! (inside joke!)
Daniel tries some clams and bbq'ed oyster, he liked them too.
My mister "I'll eat anything" didn't like it too much!
Yes, I actually gave it a whirl! Brought me back to the days when we'd sit around the kitchen table after church and help Daddy eat his sardines and smoked oysters from the can. I don't know that we really liked it, but it was a way to be "cool" with Dad! The clams and oyster weren't that bad, you just have to close your eyes before taking a bite! Don't look to long at it, you might not ever try it!

There's my handsome man! Daniel is such a sweet boy and a great big brother to Cameron. He's a huge blessing to me! If all boys were like him, I think I'd have a bunch!

This lighthouse is the world's only lighthouse made of oyster shells, so they claim, here at the Taylor family oyster farm.

This weird "creature" this girl is holding is a "gooey duck", it's got a clam-like shell at the base and the top of it is a siphon for sand and water! God sure has an imagination!

Cameron finally gets brave enough to handle a critter. I think the crab in the tank was a minor deterrent for a little while!

This is a sea cucumber! It felt like jello! Look at Cameron's face! For once, my "hands on" kinda guy was playin it safe!

We were handling the sunflower starfish. We learned how starfish eat! Ready? Well, . . . . . . they actually push their stomachs out from the bottom center and sort of engulf the food they are intending on eating and pulling back inside themselves! So they use the outside of their stomachs! Wild!

Daniel plays with a sand dollar. He was wondering what it was at first because it didn't look like the bleached sand dollars he was used to seeing in stores!

The boys had a great time with the crab races. They picked out a crab from the big tanks with the help of a worker and then put them behind the red flaps to get ready for the race. They sounded a buzzer and opened the gates, off the crabs went. . . . well, some of them!

The boys had to beat the wooden bins to make a lot of noise and vibration for the crab to "run it's race". The boys' crab just wanted to hang out!

Cameron gets an up close view of the crab.

Where to Next? The Alpaca Farm!

We hadn't ever been to the alpaca farm, so we ventured over to pay them a visit. We learned quite a bit about alpacas! I think I want a couple!

We learned that alpacas are herding animals, that means they like to stay close together in herds. So you can't just have one, you have to have at least two if you want a pet. We also learned that they are a "fiber" animal; they are sheered once a year for their "fiber." The fibers are then spun into yarn and made into coats, teddy bears, and other soft materials.

These alpacas are shorn but their pelts are very soft, like a teddy bear right off the store shelf! I wanted to stay there and pet them all afternoon!

I worried they might bite if spooked, but was reassured by the owner that it's nearly impossible for them to bite as they haven't any top teeth! Gorgeous mouth, eh?! They don't like to be pet so much, so they don't make the cuddliest kind of pet as one might think. A couple things we liked about these guys are: they are great lawn mowers and they have a communal potty spot! Alpacas aren't hooved animals and have toenails like a dog, so their feet aren't hard on the turf, allowing the grass to grow and providing them with the perfect amount of feed! They also choose one spot for everyone to use for a potty making it an easy cleanup! I should have them train my dogs!!

The kids made a craft from yarn, Daniel proudly displays his handiwork. Cameron also got in on the face painting.