Last night Mark and I got to go to one of my favorite all-time places, the Yoder, Kansas Amish Chicken Auction!  It is held every last Friday of each month.  Two of my daughters wanted some chickens and since Mark and I were in the vicinity we stopped by.  You never know what you will see there.  This time they had two miniature ponies, dozens and dozens of different colored and different sized rabbits, turkey’s, quails, doves, guinea’s, every variety of full-grown ducks and geese and fluffy baby ducks and geese.  There were miniature goats, two pot belly pigs, a full-grown colorful male peacock and pure white male peacock.  There were dozens upon dozens of cages of chickens to be sold from old hens to ones that haven’t started laying yet and colorful roosters to round out your flock.  There was five or six cages of mother hens with their brood of ten or so babies, so cute seeing the babies hop up on their mother’s back or peek out from under her wings!  They sold hundreds of fresh eggs, some for eating, some for hatching.  Here and there among all the animals is an old piece of equipment, a big rabbit hutch, empty 55 gallon barrels, buckets full of tools or hardware, rolls of twine, a basket full of dried gourds, onion sets ready to plant, and much more!

We got the girls some chickens, but anytime we stop by the sale, we don’t come home empty-handed ourselves!  We were planning on getting some baby guinea’s later this spring because we had heard they are awesome for keeping grasshopper’s and other bugs out of your garden, but why raise them from babies when we could get half-grown ones for the same price baby kit’s would cost?  Then my husband, the one I had a hard time convincing that we should get a goat last year, has fallen in love with goats, and ended up buying two, 2 1/2 week old Saanen/Boer cross bucks.  We had been looking for a young male so we wouldn’t have to borrow a neighbors buck to breed our two females.  Since Gracie is already bred and Liddy Ann is still too young, waiting on this little guy to grow up will be no big deal.  It’s a pretty big sign that we might have paid too much when the lady who owned them came up and gave me a big hug when she heard what they brought!  Afterwards, the man who was bidding against Mark  asked us if we would be willing to sell him one of them.  We said sure because we really only wanted one.  So he paid us exactly what we had paid for each one.  We agreed the next time we need to talk to each other before they sell, it would have saved both of us a lot of money!

You’ll often see children opening up a cage to gently lift out a rabbit, love on it awhile and then gently put him back in his cage. No one objects, they know it will more than likely generate a bunny sale!

It is most definitely a friendly crowd.  Everyone is willing to answer any question you have about taking care of the animals you might buy or questions about anything else for that matter.  We saw one lady buy a cage of banty hens and turn right around and hand them to a little Amish boy who had told his Dad how much he liked them.  When a couple bought several chickens not realizing that the pen did not come with them and they were wondering what on earth they were going to do, we heard the seller come up and say, “Oh heck, go ahead and take the pen, I can always make another.”  As the evening get’s late and the sun goes down, out comes the flashlights.  There are no lights were it is held so someone will hold a flashlight on the cage to be sold and the auction goes on.  If you go to pay your bill after dark, you pay by flashlight or lantern.  They stay as late as they have to, rain or shine until every last animal and item has been sold and loaded.  Then, to top things off, when you are done at the sale, just a block or so down the street is a wonderful restaurant called Carriage Crossing that serves the best homemade food including homemade pie for dessert.  Before you leave, look through the restaurants gift shop full of Amish quilts, art, books, homemade toys, gifts, homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, relishes, jellies and pickles.   Have I tweaked your interest just a little?   If you are ever in the vicinity of Hutchinson, Kansas on the last Friday of every month,  just travel a tiny bit farther to the Amish community of Yoder.  The sale begins at 4:00 and it will keep going on till every last little chick or item has found a new home!

Back at home with the newest little addition to our tiny goat family. Trying to settle on a name for the little guy, we thought Billy will suit him best, not very original but it fits!