So we decided to try something new "Work Camping"! What is work camping, essentially you trade your time to work for a free spot to park your RV. So we decided to work camp at Walnut Hollow Ranch in Hayesville, NC. Walnut Hollow is a beautiful 155 acre working cattle ranch and while we have stayed here before a few times we have never worked on the ranch. Melissa, Sean and I had various tasks we did around the ranch and while there is not a lot to do in the winter time there was still plenty of things that needed attention.
Our first responsibility, was to feed the heifers every morning and evening. While the heifers are mainly grass fed, in the winter grass is much more scarce so they are supplemented with a feed / corn mixture. There is an electric fence that runs around most of the property and when this goes out it can be fun to find out where the problem is on 155 acres. What would cause the electric to go out where we would have to find the problem? A deer. Yes, a deer can cause this problem. How? We'll they try to jump the fence and don't always make it and their back legs twist the electrified barbed wire so it causes a short in the line. Don't worry, the deer are OK just a little spooked by the whole thing.
I worked on redoing the website for the ranch (which you can check out with the link above). Sean did a lot of the manual labor like blowing off the drive way and walk-ways, moving rocks to make things look nicer before the spring, etc. Melissa and I also ran the meat store on Fridays and Saturdays from 10am - 4pm. We also took care of the RV park on the ranch, checking in guests and cleaning sites. There is also 2 (hostile) style rooms on site that we would take care of when guests would arrive and leave, things like checking them in and cleaning the rooms and doing laundry after they left.
We kept pretty busy for their being little to do in the winter and there was so much more to come in our following posts! Be sure to check them out.