Finally, the (gray, drizzly) day has arrived for the Meet Yer Eats farm tour!

First stop: Ted’s Last Stand farm and garden in Louisa, VA, home to flowers, veggies, bees, mushrooms, chickens, llamas, donkeys, dogs, and cats. We roamed the grounds, seeing a rooster wrangling, learning about mushroom farming, and petting donkeys.

Dear friend Cheenius, a bee expert, compared notes with a fellow beekeeper.

Farmer Michael Levatino demonstrated rooster wrangling and showed us the rooster’s spurs, which are used to subdue the hens for mating. They are serious weapons–the poor hens! The hens may have been molting, but the flock looked very henpecked, with raw backs.

Dear friend Cheenius was VERY excited about the mushroom growing workshops coming up this fall! These oak logs had been inoculated with Shiitake mushrooms and sealed up with wax. The mushrooms should start popping out in a few weeks.

The llamas were antisocial and kept their distance, but the donkeys were very friendly manure generators.

Next we were off to the nearby Forrest Green Farm to see, among other sights, MINIATURE COWS! (spoiler alert: they weren’t really so tiny.)