Last Saturday we went on the Harvest Celebration Farm Tour; various farms in King Country were open to the public and had special events and whatnot.

We went south to Auburn and Enumclaw. First we stopped at Tree ‘n’ Bees, as one might expect, they are an apiary and holiday tree farm. We saw a demonstration of how honey is extracted from the hives. I had seen such stuff before, but Amanda had not. They also had a hay ride, but we skipped that event, although it might have been cool. Amanda made a beeswax candle later, and I sampled their various types of honey. I did buy some (blackberry and fireseed) even though they were a bit expensive.

We met Splash, one of their two cats. She was very friendly to me, although she did give me quite a nip later.

Amanda said that two kids were giving her evil pets instead of “soft pets”, so perhaps she thought I saw going to be evil as well. We did not see her sister whose name I have forgotten.

We then went to Thunder Mountain Farm & Sleeping Giant Alpacas. They were more nursery than farm it seemed. We did see a cool muscovey.

And Amanda was happy to see two crias.

I ended up buying a purple coneflower for our house for my new echinacea business.

Next was Rockridge Orchards and Bamboo Groves. We went through their bamboo maze which was almost a little exciting. They had a chef’s demonstration that we just missed… I guess we were looking at the ducks and alpacas too long. They also had a lot of cider and different types of pears. I finally tried the “rum” pears that I had seen at various farmers markets. The woman said some people said they tasted like rum, others said no. She did not know herself because she has never had rum being a virtuous high school student and all. My verdict: yes, they definitely taste like rum. Maybe I wasn’t a virtuous high schooler.

Our last visit was with Rainier Alpacas.

As one might expect, they had many alpacas. Most of them were recently shorn. There was also a one week old cria, Sugar Baby. She looked very large already.

We took the scenic route back through Auburn and Kent. I found the roads and building orientations in Auburn very odd as nothing seemed to be a right angles for some unknown reason. We stopped in Tukwila for a snack and to look at books in a Barnes and Noble. Then is was back home to the piglet piglet.