Mini Friends Farm

07/20/2024

Always something being added to the barn 😂

Gamora (Mora) was found around the corner at 8:30pm trying to cross a busy intersection. I immediately stopped the car and had to catch her (with McDonalds sweet and sour sauce 😂). She needed a buddy since she will be locked up till she grows old enough to be released outside. Sooo meet Drax. He just got fixed found at the Strawberry Festival grounds. My friend took great care of him.

He’s coming out of his shell today. He’s a loud one but we hope Drax and Mora bond and they love our barn life. I’m sure I’ll have some more videos of their hilarious kitten antics.

07/14/2024

Martha locked them all in 🙄

07/12/2024

We added some new merchandise to our farm! A Bella t-shirt also! (Video describing it all in comments)! If you’d like to order comment below and I’ll send you the link! Thanks for supporting our dream!

07/10/2024

Did you know Donkeys don’t have their complete adult teeth till they are 5? I noticed Martha had lost one and she’s getting a new one. 💫

06/27/2024

If you haven’t seen this and you have a teen- run now and see it.

I absolutely love that they have taken Anxiety into the “talk”. So far I can say that this is the leading emotion in my house of boys currently.

The movie really hit home for the boy I was with. “He felt it” he said. He knew exactly what that emotion does. Can we get rid of it? Absolutely not. Can we learn to live with it and use strategies that make it “not so big of a deal”- absolutely.

Anxiety is not a “no no word” every single one of us has it.

Mental health needs to be discussed early to get an understanding of what strategies works per person/child to keep them healthy. The sooner the better.

Run to the movie then have a discussion on what your teen learned from the movie. Promise it’s money well spent.

06/18/2024

“‘Why did you do all this for me?' Wilbur asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die...By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle.
Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.’”

~From Charlotte's Web by Elwyn Brooks, “E.B.” White

05/30/2024

We do a few trips to summer schools/camps and preschools. We made a “stall” for each animal for the students to take care of one animal before they meet them. Shirley went to a preschool today. We look forward to hearing everything they learned about alpacas when we visit next week!


*Dylan said how cute this lesson is and told me I needed to post this on social media 😂

05/24/2024

Our shirts are LIVE! If you would like to order go to the website. You can type “local” as a code in checkout instead of shipping and pick up on our porch! Thanks for your support. A portion of the sales goes back to helping special needs groups come out to see us.

https://greatdaymade.com/collections/mini-friends-farm-collection

(Thank you to our models)

05/22/2024

Remember just to sit and spend the time with them, no rushing, no stress, no words….. the silence can speak for itself…. True bliss.❤️

05/08/2024

Our awesome neighbors just told us it’s World Donkey day! Might as well share a video from 4 of my 5 lovebug donkeys and a 6th that thinks she’s a donkey. 😂🤦‍♀️💕🫏

05/05/2024

We had a great week and then… our morning. Keeping our chin up. It’s not easy.

Needed this I hope it helps someone else.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/nH1wo9avGBMZ53Ux/?mibextid=WC7FNe

A Hard afternoon.

I’m scared to write about it. I’m worried I write too much about the hard parts.

But the truth is, the hard parts are a big part of this life. I don’t know if they ever won’t be.

I don’t know if I’ll never not be dealing with behaviours.

I don’t know if I’ll never not be exhausted.

I don’t know if I’ll never not be carrying both my armour and my bible at once.

I don’t know if I’ll ever move entirely out of survival mode.

I don’t know if this is all it’s ever going to be.

I don’t know whats around the bend.
I don’t know what the future is.

I don’t know if the hard parts will always be a big part of my writes.

I do know that they were a big part of our afternoon though.

And I do know that Special needs parenting both breaks me and keeps me going.

It drains every drop of my energy and gives me life at the same time.

Because with every hard part, comes more strength from me.

Today I cried,

but tomorrow,

I get up and do it again.

Keep going Mama,
That’s where your strength is.
I love you.
Love, Christine x Special Soul Mama

05/03/2024

Last class of the season from Impact Academy today. These boys were the sweetest kindest souls. Snoop Donk says thank you for joining us today and he enjoyed his walks! 💕🫏💕

05/03/2024

💕

04/30/2024

"There is no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more." - Robert M. Hensel

Beautiful adult special needs group today from Plant City! Really impressed with this group! Caregivers were absolutely top notch! Thanks for coming! I hope you come back! 💕

04/28/2024

We had a full week last week welcoming 3 classes to the mini farm. We pray we brought some calm to their world. 🩷

Thankful for our volunteers!

04/18/2024

Spidey our barn cat-
“No matter how buried it gets, or lost you feel, you must promise me, that you will hold on to hope and keep it alive. We have to be greater than what we suffer. My wish for you is to become hope. People need that.”
-Peter Parker Spiderman

04/15/2024

We offer special moments for our special friends. Coley came to see us, she’s 38 with Angelman’s Syndrome. I knew she loved the time with the animals when she began singing “Old McDonald had a farm”. Her mother and her friend that helps care for Coley were inspiring. There’s a special place in heaven for them. 💕

This is what it’s all about.

04/15/2024

On my calendar yesterday it said it was Fergie’s birthday so late last night I finally got home and wanted to go sing happy birthday to Fergie. She loved it! She loves attention. She looked at me like “keep it up mom I love attention from you!”

Then I realized it was her “gotcha date” last year it wasn’t her birthday but she didn’t care 😂 She’s 1 1/2 years old this month and well this girl will do anything for me.

Every morning if I lean down she comes in for a hug and puts her head on my back waits there for me to hug her back and then backs up to let me go.

Happy 1 year of gotcha day Fergilicious! You are an important part of the herd. 💕

04/07/2024

When it rains it pours…cats?!?

Hawkeye and Fat Thor we have had for over a year maybe two until December when they up and left. We don’t like to think the worse so we said “they were obviously saving the world”. Really didn’t expect to see them again at this point and lo and behold this evening.

They show up laying on the front porch like they haven’t been gone for 3 MONTHS?!?! I really hope they had an amazing mission and I wish they could tell me where they were?

04/07/2024

These three feral cats were found in a parking lot of 60. Due to good humans that trapped them, got them medical and got them fixed- we are gonna try to make them into great barn kitties and show them they are loved and can have a much better life.
Dad is Charlie (black one)
Mom is the calico one
And baby (boy) just a few months old is beautiful black and white.

What should we name mom and baby? We usually stick with Marvel characters for our cats…

03/31/2024

Happy Easter!

Meet our Easter Bunnies we just added to the mini farm. Sisters Princess Leia SkyHopper and Princess Rey SkyHopper. (We have a house rabbit name Luke SkyHopper)

Although they don’t stay in the
“Trend” as “mini” they are Flemish Giants currently only 3 months old and about 8 lbs right now. They will probably double in size by the end of the year.💕

We know special needs kids love rabbits so we made the decision last year to start looking for the right rabbits for the kids we love. They are known as the gentle giants of the rabbit world and we will take some time working with them and making sure they are well equipped for our field trip kids. Happy Easter!🐣🐇🐰

03/29/2024

Scientific Death of Jesus

For the next 60 seconds, set aside whatever you're doing and take this opportunity! Let's see if Satan can stop this.

At the age of 33, Jesus was condemned to death.

At the time, crucifixion was the "worst" death. Only the worst criminals were condemned to be crucified. Yet it was even more dreadful for Jesus. Unlike other criminals condemned to death by crucifixion, Jesus was to be nailed to the cross by His hands and feet.

Each nail was 6 to 8 inches long.

The nails were driven into His wrist, not into His palms as is commonly portrayed. There's a tendon in the wrist that extends to the shoulder. The Roman guards knew that when the nails were being hammered into the wrist, that tendon would tear and break, forcing Jesus to use His back muscles to support Himself so that He could breathe.

Both of His feet were nailed together. Thus He was forced to support Himself on the single nail that impaled His feet to the cross. Jesus could not support Himself with His legs because of the pain so He was forced to alternate between arching His back then using His legs just to continue to breathe. Imagine the struggle, the pain, the suffering, the courage.

Jesus endured this reality for over 3 hours.

Yes, over 3 hours! Can you imagine this kind of suffering? A few minutes before He died,
Jesus stopped bleeding. He was simply pouring water from his wounds.

From common images we see wounds to His hands and feet and even the spear wound to His side... But do we realize His wounds were actually made in his body. A hammer driving large nails through the wrist, the feet overlapped and an even larger nail hammered through the arches, then a Roman guard piercing His side with a spear. But before the nails and the spear, Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from His body. The beating so horrific that His face was torn and his beard ripped from His face. The crown of thorns cut deeply into His scalp. Most men would not have survived this torture.

He had no more blood to bleed out, only water poured from His wounds. The human adult body contains about 3.5 liters (just less than a gallon) of blood.

Jesus poured all 3.5 liters of his blood; He had three nails hammered into His members; a crown of thorns on His head and, beyond that, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into His chest..

All these without mentioning the humiliation He suffered after carrying His own cross for almost 2 kilometers, while the crowd spat in his face and threw stones (the cross was almost 30 kg of weight, only for its higher part, where His hands were nailed).

Jesus had to endure this experience, to open the gates of Heaven, so that you can have free access to God.

So that your sins could be "washed" away. All of them, with no exception! Don't ignore this situation.

JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR YOU!

03/24/2024

We had a really busy week this week with visits. Thankful to have a class from Livingstone Academy Autism Center they filled my heart with such joy.

Today we brought the Donkeys to share the reason why our donkeys have the cross on their back to St. Andrew's UMC Brandon.

And you can tell we have been working on our donkeys to lay down on command. 💕 Snoop and Martha are rockstars literally.

03/24/2024

Palm Sunday. Remember seven words: “He would have died just for you.”

03/19/2024

We want to wish Miss Abby a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! She and her friends had a field trip over to the barn and then off they went to her birthday lunch. Snoop Donk, Martha Stewart, Dolly Parton, Elsa and the silly alpacas hope you feel extra special on your special day! Happiest of Birthdays! Please wish Abby a Happy Birthday too! 🐴🫏🦙🐇🎂

03/16/2024

Come see the Easter Bunny!

Mini Farm Friends Foundation is partnering with Tori Leto, Founder of Brighter Times, Full-time master of social work student, and Miss City Beautiful 2024. Brighter Times Resilience Collaborative equips youth with an empowerment-based curriculum to provide young people with the tools they need to o...