And the winners are ...

Spinning demonstration at Antiquity Oaks

The Second Annual Farm Crawl was a success, according to farmers and guests alike.

Raffle winners were:
Marlana Sokolovich - The Country Mansion
Taylor and Logan Conger - The Country Mansion
C. L. Gukeisen - The Country Mansion
Mike & Elena Cummings - Station 343
Sherri Sachs - Station 343
Lesa Namchick - The Basket of Homegrown Products
Mike Sinks - Pet Products

Planning for the Third Annual Farm Crawl will begin soon!

Look For These Signs Tomorrow!

Each farm has several out on the main intersections near their place, as well as one at the driveway.  Keep your eyes peeled!

A Few More New Babies

Farmer in Odell has 4 new ducklings!

Born just in time to show them off at the crawl, they hatched on Thursday in our incubator.  Here is a picture of our Andrew holding 3 of them.  Sorry for the blurry one - it's hard to get 3 newborns to all stay still at once!

Farmer in Odell is also going to have a limited amount of kale and chard available for sale and we regret to say we will not have lemon balm tea.  The lemon balm isn't looking too good and we don't want to sell you poor tea.  The oregano is slowly taking over the yard and is crowding out the lemon balm.  That, coupled with the lack of rain over the past 3 weeks, has made it turn yellow.  Next spring we'll have to do some serious work on the herb garden!j

We're so excited about meeting you all tomorrow - drive safe and ENJOY your day on the farms!

Last minute updates!

When heading out to Saturday's Farm Crawl, if you are coming from up north, be sure to check an online traffic map to make sure that the traffic on I-55 isn't backed up too far due to the construction on the DesPlaines River bridge. If it is backed up, you can take alternate routes through Seneca or Morris, and that will only add about five minutes to the normal travel time down I-55. If you live farther east you can take I-57 south and then go west on Rt. 17 from Kankakee.

We also have a couple of additions to the items for sale. Melinda at Cherokee Winds will have beeswax candles available, and Kat at M2A Farm has handmade tote bags, which are made from repurposed feed bags.

There is a corn maze this year at Eden's Harvest Farm, and the entrance is only $3 per person.

To get your free tickets to the Farm Crawl, go to EventBrite! Although tickets are not required, we do appreciate having an idea of how many people to expect. So, to thank you for getting tickets, we will have a special drawing for the EventBrite ticket holders. The winner will receive a gift bag of pet car products, including oatmeal soap, conditioner, oatmeal conditioning spray, ear and eye wipes, full body and paw wipes, and a leash. And as much as we all love animals, please don't bring your dogs to the event.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

New babies on the farms

There have been a few new additions to a couple of the farms! At Eden's Harvest, Princess the bantam hen hatched a chick. Yes, just one chick, and yes, that's unusual to hatch only one.

On Antiquity Oaks, the two llamas have recently given birth to babies. Sitara gave birth to this pretty little thing on Monday! This picture was taken when she was only a few hours old.

And Katydid gave birth to this lovely male a couple weeks ago.

Additional drawings for visitors

In addition to the basket of homegrown goodies donated by all four farms, this year's Farm Crawl visitors will also have the opportunity to win five $40 gift certificates to local restaurants. Three lucky winners will get gift certificates to Country Mansion in Dwight, and two other winners will receive gift certificates to Station 343, also in Dwight.

Remember -- Although tickets are not required, if you get your free tickets on EventBrite for the event, you can use your ticket as an extra entry into the drawing.

New for this year's Farm Crawl!

We have lots of new and exciting changes for this year's farm crawl, and one of the first changes we need to mention is the name. We realized that we are all in the same county, so we decided that Livingston County Farm Crawl would be a more appropriate name (and a little quicker to say).

So, what's new this year at the Second Annual Livingston County Farm Crawl?

• Perhaps the most exciting addition will be a corn maze at Eden's Harvest Farm! The corn was planted by Farmer Dave in April, and they just cut the maze into the corn this past week. Some of you might remember Farmer Dave from last year. He brought over some of his big farm equipment for people to check out.


• More give-aways! In addition to the gift basket filled with goodies from all five farms, this year we will also be giving away gift certificates to five local restaurants that have generously donated them. So, be sure to take your farm passport to all five farms and get it punched for your chance to win. You can pick up your passport at the first farm you visit.


• Tickets! We were happily surprised last year by the number of people who showed up to visit our farms, so this year we decided to ask people to get tickets so that we would have an idea of how many people to expect. The tickets are free and are not required for entry, but we're asking you to get them just to help us know how many people to expect. You can get your tickets through Eventbrite. To thank you for getting tickets and helping us to prepare better, you can use your ticket for an extra entry to our drawings!

We also want to let all of our friends from up north know that there is road construction on I-55 at the DesPlaines River at mile marker 245, so if you are coming from the Chicago area, you might consider heading out I-80 to Morris and going south on Rt. 47, which will run into I-55 after about half an hour. Taking this route will only add about five or ten minutes to your trip.

Visit 5 farms in 2013!

We've already had our second planning meeting for the 2013 Second Annual Farm Crawl, which will be held Saturday, August 17, and we're happy to announce that the Cusack family at Cherokee Winds Farm will be joining the four farms that participated in the First Farm Crawl.

The Cusacks have horses,

miniature donkeys, llamas, pygmy goats, chickens, Tomas the turkey,

and Barbados sheep, which come from the tropics and have hair instead of wool, so they don't have to be sheared!

They also have bees,

which means they're hoping to have honey to sell, as well as goat milk soap, felted soap, and herbal teas.