Weather permitting, every Saturday afternoon between 2 and 3 it’s time for sheep to stroll and goats to promenade. That’s when Brett Bannor, Manager of Animal Collections, walks animals from the Smith Farm flock around the campus, giving visitors a chance to meet and learn about our heritage breed livestock. In the heat of summer, the walks are confined to the Smith Farm, but in the cooler weather of the other seasons, animals are walked all the way up front to the Entrance Gardens.
In 2023, our sheep and goats welcomed 2,144 guests.
Our most gregarious greeters are Buster and Daisy—Gulf Coast Sheep whose attitude about strolls is, the longer the better. Claud, our male Angora Goat, is perhaps the boldest walker—he is our only animal who will trot fearlessly across the Quarry bridge!
While we created Beyond the Barnyard to give visitors a fun experience, we also value the wonderful stories our guests share about their own contacts with animals. We’ve had people tell us that they grew up raising small livestock for 4-H, or that they saw goats employed to eat away kudzu in a vacant lot, or that they recently visited some country where they saw hundreds of sheep. Often these stories lead to the visitors sharing pleasant memories-—just where is this wonderful farm where you spent the summers of your childhood that you now remember so fondly, all these years later? Such conversations in the past year have shown us that Atlanta History Center hosts visitors from Tennessee, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Montana, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
We’ve also chatted with guests from foreign lands, some who are just visiting America, others who now live here. Among the countries we’ve heard represented are Somalia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Romania, Ecuador, and Morocco. We are pleased that when visitors tell us their stories, it reflects our shared history across the divide of nations, politics, religion, age, and myriad other differences. This is a key part of the Atlanta History Center’s purpose.
Guests are welcome to greet the animals; and encouraged to ask questions about our living collections.
While interactions with adults can be fascinating, what truly gives Beyond the Barnyard a special impact is when a child sees a goat or a sheep on a walk and is delighted beyond words. They never imagined that their trip to the museum today would lead to such a close encounter and now they can tell everyone about meeting a new wooly friend!
We hope to see you at one of the Beyond the Barnyard walks, and to hearing those stories that remind us how much animals have enriched all our lives.