May 24-25, 2012 Pettit Creek Farm, Carterville, GA and beyond

At the RV convention in Brooksville, Fla we joined Harvest Hosts. It is a group of wineries and farms that let you stay a night with no hook ups or fees. We went to our first harvest host the Pettit Farm in Carterville, GA. They have a kind of petting zoo. They do farm tours,  parties, field trips, at Halloween a corn maze and pumpkin patch, Christmas a nativity, light  thing.  They have the largest camel herd in GA among other really interesting animals. The cages and corrals  really clean, did not smell like dirty animals. We pulled in, took a farm tour than had our hosts over  for a beverage. Very interesting people, really cool place.

Here is the bus, parked by the camel trailer. Scott is out plowing the field for the corn maze in front of us. When we pulled in a herd of these guinea hens scurried near the bus. I thought at first they were turkeys.

They have a pair of Lemurs-really cute and this cockatoo was shaking hands with June our hostess.

A wallaby and a peacock showing off his tail feathers.

Sue feeding the chickens. I have never fed chickens before, the hind end of a hen sitting on eggs.

The front rodent is a cavey, the third largest rodent in the world and the one in the back is the second largest, a capybara. an emu with wild hair.

pregnant goat, and a couple zebras.

Here is spot checking us out. Two of the 15 camels they own. Camels loose their hair in the summer. Not sure how they keep from getting sunburned.

John with the camels. An African tortoise. There were a couple of them, we fed them clover. This one was glad to see us.

A belted Galloway cow-they call them Oreo cows and an African watusi named freckles.  The above shot is what we could see from the bus. Llamas, goats, emus and camels. This camel is named Victoria and she is pregnant. The brown llama is named Dolly—Dolly llama!

And we can see the zebras out the window. They were cute, I have lots of photos of them.

more  zebra photos. They are all girls, I guess the males get aggressive. It is almost impossible to train a zebra, they stay wild and are very skittish.

Our hosts Scott and June and Blue the dog. June feeding the baby camel and zebra. There is also a baby sheep and llama in the barn too.

 

It was a really fun place and we had a nice quiet, dark camping spot. We will have to try more Harvest Host sites.

I missed the welcome to North Carolina sign, so I got the county sign instead. Here is the bus parked just north of Murphy, North Carolina and just south of the Smokey Mountains.

sunset over Tennessee, which is just west of us.