Trip to a Farm

I have been pretty busy lately.  I have hosted two Farewell parties that were a lot of fun.  We have two more this month.  I will do a blog about this when they are all done.

Last Saturday, a friend asked if I wanted to go to see a farm to see some animals.  The thought of MERS crossed my mind, but I decided that I would not touch or get very close to the animals.  The driver was the person who worked with my friend's husband.  He is knowledgeable about the area.  It was an hour away to Yanbu Al Nakhal.  As we were driving, I saw the walled enclosures of empty space that I have been wondering and blogging about.  I had thought that they might be cemeteries because I had read that graves were not marked,  and the cemeteries were enclosed by 6 ft walls.  But there are so many of them on the way to Yanbu Al Nakhal, some not far from others.  I began to think that they were something else.  On another trip, I had asked a driver who lived in this area about these enclosures and he didn't know.  Well, this driver knew!  He said that they WERE cemeteries.  When I asked him why there were so many of them, often near each other, he said that each one was for a DIFFERENT Bedouin tribe.  Members of different tribes cannot be buried in the same cemetery.  Mystery finally solved! 
 
We have been having very hot days, 115 degrees F and very windy and sandy.  The sand seems to hang in the air so that it looks brown in the distance.  The workers all wear masks or wrap a scarf around their face covering their nose and mouth.  When we got to the turnoff road for the farm, the mountains almost looked like a mirage.  You have to really look for them in the background of this picture:

We drove down a dusty road to the farm and first came to the ostriches.  The driver said that raising ostriches is very easy because they are low maintenance.  Also, their meat is highly prized.

Then, they had a cute animal, I can't remember what it was-maybe a gazelle?
They had others but sold them off.  This little guy was not in demand because something was wrong with his leg.  People were afraid that because it had a problem with its leg, its meat might be diseased. So, he was saved.

Of course, no trip in Saudi Arabia is complete without seeing camels.

There were four kinds of sheep:

 And a few guinea fowl:

Then, we went up to the tent.  This was the prettiest tent inside that I have seen so far.  It had small chandelier light fixtures.

 

 

 Two lovely friends:

View of the valley from the tent:

 

The outer layer of the tent is made from woven camel hair:

On the way back home, we stopped at a small market and I bought another dallah.  It was a pretty nice morning!