Well, I’m finally feeling like half a cowboy, because we now have half horses on campus thanks to the Tulsa fundraiser in mid-April. And, by half-horses, I do mean DONKEYS. We went on a bit of a “donkey hunt” towards the middle of last week, and after much searching, found 2 families, each with 2 donkeys, who were willing to sell. The village was about 2 hours away from the JBFC campus, so we had to rent a truck, trick the donkeys into the bed, and start the treck back to campus, but everything went extremely smoothly, and now, Santa, Jack, Ethel, and Winnie are grazing happily around campus, taking their dust bathes and “eh-awing” as they see fit (even at 2AM). Training has begun for them to learn to plow and pull carts, as to reduce the great expense we use to do both of these things on campus.
I bring this new addition up because it speaks to the progress we are experiencing on our farm. Since restructuring the staffing and creating new goals, all of our livestock has been extremely prolific, we have been “passing” a great number of the young birthed on campus, and our livestock and farm are starting to turn into a real business. We are even registered for the state fair at the beginning of August in hopes of advertising this business as well as bringing home the gold for biggest hog and turkey-maybe even the prize for loudest donkey!
Furthermore, thanks to the Tulsa fundraiser, we have been able to start a new laying hen business, and have purchased 600 new laying hens in hopes of being able to supply the surrounding area as well as our campus with quality eggs. The first coop has been constructed already, and the second one’s construction is well under way. All of this progress just means we are moving closer and closer to our goal of self-sustainability.
