Greetings, friends.
Who is ready to leave their cozy city apartment or respectable office and go with me and my granddaughter to a small farm located somewhere in the taiga on the banks of the Onega River?
Last week, I took my granddaughter to her home in the town of Mirny in the Arkhangelsk region. From my house to my son's house is 1200 km. My granddaughter has been spending the summer with me for 3 years now, and then I take her to her parents in the last days of August.
When I visit the North on such days, my son and I go fishing or to some interesting places. This time, my daughter-in-law suggested going to a small ranch, because my granddaughter loves such places. She said it was only 35 km away. By the way, there were 4 of us on this trip.
On the map, I indicated with a red line our approximate route along a relatively good dirt road.
That was the first thing I saw when I parked the car in the clearing next to the ranch. This is a soldier's grave, dated 1920. I knew that in those years, the American expeditionary force was advancing on revolutionary Russia from Arkhangelsk. Even in Soviet times, this fact was poorly covered in school textbooks, especially now it is all covered in darkness.
We bought 4 tickets and a young girl of about 14 or 15 took us to the farm. The first was a large aviary with rabbits.
I've also been breeding rabbits for over 15 years, but I've kept rabbits in cages. On this farm, only mothers with small rabbits are sitting in cages.
The granddaughter asked her mother to take one rabbit home. And it wasn't a joke, she asked me to do it seriously.
She really liked the rabbits. We took 2 boxes of pet food, which contained carrots, cabbage, apples. Rabbits clung to our girls, and my granddaughter really liked it.
There were always goats and sheep in my childhood. They lived in my grandmother's house and in our house too. From May to October, my mother sent them to the pasture every morning, and in the evening, I had to meet them and feed them. Also, with some frequency, my aunt and I went to graze a herd of goats and sheep. It was very interesting. The goats liked that I took them along a small river, and they ate young branches of bushes.
We met 10 goats on this farm. They, like the rabbits, asked us for carrots, apples, and cabbage. We even bought 2 more boxes of vegetables for the animals.
Then we go to the piglets. Oh, and it's dirty in their pen! Little young piglets live in clean surroundings and are not allowed to walk outside. And they wouldn't let us go to them either.
We also fed the piglets. This hairy pig was very aggressive and drove other pigs away from the food. I've never seen such hairy piglets before.
The ranch has a large poultry house. I roughly estimated that chickens produce about 200-250 eggs per day.
We bought ten eggs. The price is 150 rubles, which is about $1.87.
These chickens have an interesting crest on their heads.
The chicks live in a separate aviary. And there is a third poultry house, which houses unusual chickens, growing turkeys, and even a peacock.
Adult turkeys and geese are walking in an open space.
There are 4 horses and one pony on the ranch. Friendly creatures.
On holidays and weekends, people with children come to this ranch, and then you can ride horses and quad bikes.
In winter, there are additional activities for children and adults.
After walking around the ranch, we ate pancakes that the ranch girls had prepared for us and had a cup of coffee. We bought one and a half liters of goat's milk, 4 small heads of soft goat cheese, and eggs. I love goat's milk, I used to drink it when I was a kid. But many people don't drink this kind of milk because it has a special taste.
There is a pond next to the ranch, from which a river flows out in cascading waterfalls and heads into the Onega River, which flows north to the White Sea.
When we were driving to the ranch, I saw teddy bears on the side of the road. Someone even arranged a roof over their heads. My granddaughter didn't see them, so on the way back, we stopped next to them to take a photo. It turned out that there was also a polar bear hiding among the trees, and the granddaughter was the first to see it.
My granddaughter really liked this place. In the evening, she told her dad about him. She was even upset when we left the ranch; she wanted to stay with the rabbits longer.
By the way, the location of the city can be seen by clicking on the link to the map in the comments to the article by 
Thanks for reading...
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With love
Good luck and have fun
